Review Summary: A bootleggish, tedious cash-grabber best left on the shelf.
The recipe seemed simple: one scandalous washed-out rocker, lots of surgically-enhanced blonde Hollywood debutantes, a reality-show format, a deal with a music-oriented channel…instant success. Sadly, for those of you thinking this concept could never work, VH1 is proud to present
Rock Of Love, a date show hosted by former and current Poison frontman Bret Michaels, and so successful it spawned its own soundtrack album. And yes, some amount of eye-rolling and groaning is in order, because while the show sucked, guess what? So does the album.
In truth,
Rock My World is not as imbecilic as
Rock Of Love, although it is not too far off. It’s just as bland and mediocre as everything else Michaels has done outside of his main band (and, let’s be far, within it, too). As noted, this release basically serves as a soundtrack for the show, and as such assumes a declared Best-Of format which Michaels’ previous releases (even the enhanced
Freedom Of Sound) had managed to skirt, despite the amount of repetition within them. Of course, no glam-rock compilation would be complete without some new tracks, and this one has them too; however, the amount of repeat songs amidst these eleven tracks prevents anyone from actually considering this a “new” release.
Rock My World culls tracks from Michaels’ three previous full-length releases, with only the rare
Country Demos and the hybrid
Ballads, Blues And Stories being left aside. And herein lies the first problem.
Songs Of Life was released in 2003;
Freedom Of Sound, which already rehashed some songs from that album, came out in ’05;
Rock My World is from 2008, and guess what?
It has the exact same songs. In fact, this album achieves the prowess of being the third consecutive Bret Michaels album to include the insufferable
Bittersweet and the catchy-but-silly
Menace To Society, two songs which Michaels seems hell-bent on turning into his career’s spearhead tracks, for some reason. It also includes a mandatory appearance by
Raine, as well as a track featured on Michaels’
previous album, in case any of his ten fans had forgotten about it.
All in all, the selection is pretty terrible, with the always welcome
Raine, Open Road and
Songs Of Life constituting the only actually worthwhile songs on here. What’s more, the new tracks do little to make this album worthwhile, as one of them is a middling rocker (the title-track), while the other two are ballads, with
Start Again being a Nickelbackian slab of mediocrity and
Fallen an exceedingly sappy piano ballad. Among the three, they manage to raise half an eyebrow, adding to this album’s overall tediousness.
Another huge problem with this release is its bootleggish look and feel. Despite being an official VH1 release, this album has all the trappings of a pirate edition, right down to the oscillations in sound between tracks. In fact, the producers chose not to use the revolutionary new technology known as “digital mastering”, and as a result tracks from different albums often come with different mixes and even different equalization levels. The overall effect is, again, horrible, reeking of sloppiness on everyone’s part.
So you get the drift by now: this is a purely cash-grabbing release which does nothing to further Michaels’ career, apart from maybe getting him a few more willing debutantes. With a bootleggish feel, horrid selection and tedious overall effect, this one is, like most of Michaels’ solo discography, best left on the shelf. Don’t bother.
Recommended Tracks
Raine
Songs Of Life
Open Road
