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Alice Cooper

Hey Stoopid

Review by Gary Hill

This album showcases a metal perpective on the classic Cooper sound and also shows prog tendencies in several places. Alice is joined on this album by many musicians, including several very notables guests (Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Ozzy Osbourne and others).

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: The Early Years Volume 4 at garyhillauthor.com/Music-Street-Journal-The-Early-Years.

Track by Track Review
Hey Stoopid
Featuring guest musicians Joe Satriani, Slash and Ozzy Osbourne, this is a fun metallic rocker. The piece is potent and quite catchy, and puts forth an anti drug message. "If you stick a needle in your arm, You bite the dust, you buy the farm."
Love's A Loaded Gun
A crunchy intro leads to a moody, balladic song with a powerful hook laden chorus. This is an anthemic rock ballad that shows off many definite classic Cooper tendencies.
Snakebite
Snakebite is a straightforward metallic rocker with a strong chorus
Burning Our Bed
Another cut featuring Satriani, this is a balladic rocker with old Cooper textures. It leans toward the "Only Women Bleed" sort of mode.
Dangerous Tonight
This metal cut ends with textural keys that segue into the next track.
Might As Well Be On Mars
Starting with the same textural keys that ended Dangerous, this is a nice balladic rocker with strong progish tendencies, particularly in the ending segment. This extremely powerful cut has many changes throughout and features some excellent lyrical imagery. "The city streets are wet with rain tonight, Taxi drivers swerve from lane to lane, A lonely guitar man playin` down the hall, midnight blues comin` through the walls." This one tells the tale of a man dealing with the pain of a lost love. "The city seems so old and grey and beat, It closes in and makes me wanna suffocate, And you just live across the street, But that`s a billion miles away."
Feed My Frankenstein
This hard rocking metallic cut features the guest work of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Nikki Sixx. The lyrics to this one are definitely just for fun.
Hurricane Years
This straightforward metal number features Vinnie Moore in a guest appearance.
Little By Little
Another strong metal cut with a solid hook, Little by Little is another that features Joe Satriani.
Die For You
A potent arena rock ballad, this is another lost love type of song, and features a guest appearance by Mick Mars. "These cuts are deep but you plead innocent, Are you hell or are you heaven sent, You`re much too cold to know how much you meant to me."
Dirty Dreams
Dirty Dreams is a Motley Crueish metal piece that features Vinnie Moore.
Wind-Up Toy
Starting with twisted childlike music, the number then becomes quite spooky for a time before settling into a metallic hard rock format. The tune seems to combine the classic Cooper creepy style with a modern metal approach. This one makes very effective usage of occasional dissonance to lend a haunting tone, and the ending segment has a very eerie texture featuring strangely produced spoken word segments and a reference to Welcome To My Nightmare`s Steven. This one also includes the guitar work of Joe Satriani. "Voices come from down the hall, In my room all painted white, I have my bat and rubber ball, I like to sleep with them at night."
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