Review Summary: You’re busted!
Well, allow me to introduce you to the worst album in
Cheap Trick’s discography. And no, it’s not
The Doctor, at least in my view.
Of course, that record didn't stray far from the subject of our discussion today, but it still had a slight advantage—a couple of quite solid tracks. Even the commercially successful but creatively bankrupt
Lap of Luxury came very close to claiming this dubious title. However, it was also saved by the presence of a few decent tracks, even if their quality never rose above average. But
Busted, completely living up to its name, turns out to be an absolute creative wasteland, incapable of offering the listener anything worth paying attention to. Absolutely nothing.
As already noted,
Lap of Luxury scored a financial hit primarily thanks to the unexpectedly successful ballad
The Flame, despite all its banality. The label executives were undoubtedly ecstatic, as Cheap Trick had desperately needed commercial success throughout the entire decade. Yet, for this momentary victory, the band paid a colossal price, compromising their creative integrity and outsourcing the songwriting process to outside writers. As a result, Cheap Trick almost entirely lost their identity, becoming just one of many faceless bands mass-produced by record companies. Intoxicated by the unexpected success of
Lap of Luxury, the musicians decided that stepping into the same river twice would be a breeze. Apparently, the meaning of that idiom was lost on them.
Predictably, the second attempt failed. Paradoxically, this time only half of the tracks were created with the participation of outside writers, but that no longer made a fundamental difference. Evidently, Zander, Nielsen, and Petersson had gotten so used to relying on someone else's talent during the sessions for
Lap of Luxury that they tried to mechanically replicate the exact same approach on
Busted. In the end, we got material cobbled together from other people's clichés—and not even signature ones, as the band had forgotten how to use even their own ideas.
While listening to the album, you can't shake the feeling of absolute phoniness: what we hear is not Cheap Trick, but a faceless clone in the vein of
Foreigner, only vaguely resembling the original through Robin Zander's voice. Ironically, Mick Jones himself, from the aforementioned band, contributed to the creation of the record. Thus ended—so sadly, yet so logically—the long downward spiral that Cheap Trick had entered back in the eighties. If only the musicians had tried to rethink their style in a fresh and daring way—after all, abandoning past canons sometimes does a band good. But to completely erase one's own ego just to try on someone else's cardboard masks is an achievement of the most dubious kind.
There is not a single excuse for this album. Even the much-maligned
The Doctor retained at least some semblance of its own identity, even if it was hidden under questionable arrangements. Here, there is nothing: no style, no individuality, no spark. Fortunately,
Busted flopped miserably on the charts, putting an end to the darkest period in the band's history. After all, justice sometimes triumphs in the music world. As for whether the legendary band managed to learn from their mistakes, we will find out next time.
