Retro Video of the Week: "Forever" by KISS

This past Monday marked the 25th anniversary of the first show of KISS's Alive/Worldwide reunion tour, at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.  It was the first time the four original members of the band -- Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss -- had toured together since 1979, and the tour ended up being the highest-grossing tour of 1996.  Add to that the fact that A&E aired it's two-part documentary about the band, Biography: KISStory, this past Sunday and Monday nights, and it only seems right to feature a KISS song as this week's Retro Video of the Week.  By the way, I very much enjoyed Biography: KISStory, even if Ace and Peter declined to participate.

KISS had its ups and downs during the '80s, thanks to several lineup changes and the changing tastes in music, as the bands they influenced became the trendsetters, forcing KISS to try to keep up.  They had mixed success, but their biggest hit of the non-makeup era and biggest hit overall since "Beth" in 1976 came off of 1989's Hot in the Shade album, which I featured a couple weeks ago as my most recent CoronaVinyl selection for "K."

"Forever" is a power balled that went to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, co-written by Paul Stanley and Michael Bolton -- the popular singer, not the one who worked at Initech.  In the era of the hair band power ballad, this one holds up to many of the others, and it showed that the band could keep up with all the bands that they influenced.