CoronaVinyl Day 247 (K): Crazy Nights by KISS

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "K," and we're going with some '80s KISS -- Crazy Nights, the band's 14th studio album, released in 1987.

The '80s were an interesting time for KISS.  When the decade started, they still had their original lineup intact (though it was fracturing), and they were still wearing their makeup and were one of the biggest bands in the world.  The early '80s didn't treat the band well, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley left the band, the band's first few albums of the decade were not great commercial successes, they didn't have a Top 40 hit, and the band took off their makeup in 1983.  The group also went through a couple lineup changes in the '80s, and Gene Simmons was more focused on his acting career than the band.

Crazy Nights was the band's second album with the lineup of Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Bruce Kulick, and Eric Carr.  The band decided to switch their sound a little, focusing on a more mainstream rock sound to keep up with the era.  They used some outside songwriters to help write songs, including legendary songwriters Desmond Child and Diane Warren, and for the first time, the band used synthesizers and keyboards.  

The result was the band's best-charting album of the '80s.  It reached #18 on the Billboard album chart, as well as #4 on the UK album chart, making it the band's highest-charting album ever in the UK.  "Crazy Crazy Nights," which was co-written by Stanley and Child, went to #65 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the power ballad "Reason to Live," co-written by Stanley and outside songwriter Adam Mitchell, reached #64.  In the UK, the former went to #4 on the UK pop chart -- the band's highest-charting single in the UK -- the latter went to #33, and "Turn On the Night" (co-written by Stanley and Warren) went to #41.  Helping the band's cause was that all three of those songs had videos on MTV, and the video to "Reason to Live" was particularly popular among the Dial MTV crowd.

Now I'm not going to sit here and blow smoke up your ass and say that this is some amazing album or that it holds a candle to the band's classic albums from the '70s, but it's a pretty good '80s rock album.  It definitely has a Survivor feel to it in some songs, and other song are harder rocking.

For whatever reason, the songs from the album have been very underrepresented in KISS's live shows over the years.  Crazy Nights is the second least represented album in live setlists over the band's career, behind only the disastrous 1981 concept album Music From the Elder.  Only "Crazy Crazy Nights" was included on the band's setlist after the tour for the album, and it was dropped after the subsequent tour and only reappeared 20 years later.  

Favorite song on Side 1:  "Crazy Crazy Nights"
This is a fun-loving '80s rock song.  It's a little cheesy, but that was the style back then.  It's also Daughter's favorite KISS song, for better or worse.

Favorite song on Side 2:  "When Your Walls Come Down"
The first track on Side 2 is one of the harder rocking songs on the album, and it's a more straightforward hard rock song than some of the more mainstream sounding songs on the rest of the album.