Alice Cooper - Trash

The 80’s weren’t kind to music, but least of all to Alice Cooper. More correctly the nearly twenty years between Welcome to my Nightmare and The Last Temptation weren’t kind to Alice Cooper, with the exception of DaDa, if that was your thing. Between that he ran through whatever fad was cool at the time, from new wave on Flush the Fashion, through hair metal on Raise Your Fist and Yell. Of all of the Alice Cooper albums produced in the 80’s, probably the most consistent is Trash, released in 1989.

The album was produced by Desmond Child, sought out by Alice to make a ‘comeback album’. Comeback albums were something of a new idea at the time. Most Rock stars at that point either died too young to ever go away in the first place, or kept playing due to tight fisted royalty agreements meaning they couldn’t afford to do anything else. The main problem with comeback albums is they are often ‘by-the-numbers’ affairs meant to capitalise on whatever the hip thing is at the time. In 1989 this was imitating Bon Jovi. Alice Cooper went one step further by letting producer Desmond Child, Bon Jovi’s most prominent songwriter at the time, co write all the material on the album. It’s pretty tough to really recommend this as an Alice Cooper album because outside of a few good lyrics here and there it’s tough to find Alice Cooper’s personality in here anywhere.

It’s a catchy album, and it’s easy to listen to. It’s one of the best pop albums I’ve ever heard, it’s just that pop albums don’t usually make for very interesting listening. The second side, despite having one of the most dated tracks on the album, is where the music deviates a little from ‘hit single tempo’ and has some actually pretty good lyrics, even given the monotonous subject material. Credit where credits due, I loved this album for YEARS. Give it a go, but Love it to Death through Welcome to my Nightmare is where the best stuff is.