Album review: LOVERBOY – Loverboy and Get Lucky (Remasters)

Rock Candy Records [release date 24.09.21]

Selling 6 million between them, Loverboy’s self titled debut (1980) and follow up, Get Lucky (1981), have now had the treatment from Rock Candy Records.
Forty years of remastering evolution has brought us to the point where a very contemporary digital clarity can be achieved.

Just like movies, rock albums are memories – they capture our lives. One listen to an old favourite, and we’re back in that moment. That’s what it’s like here, with these two remasters.

From the hooky rock heights of ‘Lady of the 80s’ to the gleaming pop immediacy of ‘Little Girl’, the debut album, Loverboy, harks back to the sounds you would associate with the early days of the AOR genre.

As with every new beginning, you get a sense of the different musical threads the band were pulling at – New Wave, Arena Rock, Dance Rock – as they created their own material, mining their influences, putting their own indelible mark on the popular music culture of the time.

‘The Kid Is Hot Tonite’ and ‘Turn Me Loose’ troubled the Canadian and US Billboard Singles Charts. It was an auspicious beginning. And this from a band turned down by all the US major labels. ****

A year later they were back in the studio, again with producer, Bruce Fairbairn, and engineer, Bob Rock, recording Get Lucky.
These two studio wizards created a sound that now seems put together frame by frame, like an exquisitely lit movie. It’s an enabling production, allowing the remastering to generate vividly coloured rock from the monochrome originals.

The hits just kept on coming. ‘Working For The Weekend’, hugely popular with blue collar workers; the self deprecatory ‘Lucky Ones’ and the obligatory big ballad ‘When It’s Over’ all cemented the band’s place as the rising stars of Canadian Rock. In itself, ‘Get Lucky’ went on to achieve over 4 million in sales. ***1/2

The band is still touring, still performing live. So, take the chance to see them if you get it. And if the familiar voices are now struggling for traction on the upper slopes of the band’s much-loved melodies, you can always fall back on these remasters. They might remind you why you got into melodic rock in the first place.

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)