It seems like pretty much every week brings along some 30th or 40th anniversary of some event that makes us children of the 80s feel awfully old.
This week’s anniversary was the 30th of the release of Def Leppard’s Hysteria. Over at The Ringer, Rob Harvilla gives the album its proper due.
Def Leppard’s ‘Hysteria’ Is Still the Greatest Hair-Metal Album Ever Made
Man, was that album unescapable. And seemingly forever, as it really wasn’t until nearly a year later, in the summer of ’88, when the album really took off and “Pour Some Sugar On Me” was played approximately every 15 seconds. As much as I was listening to hip hop and New Jack Swing-era R&B my senior year of high school, Hysteria was just about always in my personal rotation, too.
Harvilla’s article is great: it’s equally tongue-in-cheek and serious. But I must lodge one objection: Pyromania was a better album. As shiny as Pyromania was, it still had an edge and roughness to it. On Hysteria every single rough edge has been polished away. If that album was represented visually, it would be an immaculate sheet of glass. I will still listen to Pyromania a few times a year. I never listen to Hysteria, other than its title track or “Animal” if I come across them. “Sugar” is an instant skip if I come across it on the radio.
One of my prouder blog posts ever was this breakdown of Pyromania from almost seven years ago. Really not sure how I didn’t win all the blog awards for this one.
By the way, worth noting that shortly after I bought the Pyromania CD back in 2010, I found a copy I had purchased like two years before. I sent about 95% of my old CD collection to a yard sale a couple years ago. I hung onto one copy of Pyromania though.