Released in August 1991, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts eighth studio album, Notorious, has the distinction of being released one month prior to the release of Nirvana's Nevermind. For that reason, it sounds like an album written for a different time because, in essence, it was.
Like the platinum-certified Up Your Alley, which propelled Jett into heavy rotation on MTV after her two previous albums had gone tin, Notorious contains the obligatory Desmond Child and Diane Warren co-writes, but is also notable for another collaboration: with none other than the Replacements' Paul Westerberg.
At the time of their collaboration, both Jett and Westerberg were at a career crossroads.
Westerberg, of course, had released All Shook Down as a Replacements record the previous year and taken what was left of that band on a year-long tour before officially putting the Mats on ice at a concert in Chicago's Grant Park one month prior to the release of "Backlash", the first single from Jett's Notorious.
Considering the alt. rock street cred Westerberg brought to the collaboration, the lack of promotion the single received upon release was stupefying. A commercial single was never manufactured and the initial promotion of the song to modern rock and AOR radio formats was brief and, therefore, ineffective.
Westerberg, of course, had released All Shook Down as a Replacements record the previous year and taken what was left of that band on a year-long tour before officially putting the Mats on ice at a concert in Chicago's Grant Park one month prior to the release of "Backlash", the first single from Jett's Notorious.
Considering the alt. rock street cred Westerberg brought to the collaboration, the lack of promotion the single received upon release was stupefying. A commercial single was never manufactured and the initial promotion of the song to modern rock and AOR radio formats was brief and, therefore, ineffective.
It was upon seeing CBS' unwillingness to promote that or any other song from the album that it dawned on this writer that Notorious was, for all intents and purposes, doomed by the malaise of "contractual obligation" on the part of Jett's label.
This is a damn shame because Notorious is, without question, one of Jett's better albums.
Unlike most of her recent releases that suffered from a sort of Jeckyl & Hyde personality clash where high octane covers butted heads with slick pop songs crafted by the likes of Diane Warren and Desmond Child, Notorious gave listeners the sense that, for once, Jett had something to say.
Unlike most of her recent releases that suffered from a sort of Jeckyl & Hyde personality clash where high octane covers butted heads with slick pop songs crafted by the likes of Diane Warren and Desmond Child, Notorious gave listeners the sense that, for once, Jett had something to say.
Granted, at least half the album was written with Child, but the only "cover" on the album is a re-recording of The Runaways "Wait For Me", which Jett wrote. The result is an album that is Jett's most cohesive and heartfelt, which makes it all the more frustrating that the album fell on such deaf ears at the label.
"Don't Surrender", which did see a commercial U.S. release, was a radio-ready rocker saddled with one of those generic titles that has become so overused (like, say, "Tonight" or "Only The Strong Survive") that you almost wince upon seeing it, so its quick death at radio was not hard to explain, but the same could not be said for the elegiac "Ashes In The Wind", which, quite frankly, had "hit" written all over it.
Of course, one of the album's real highlights is "Treadin' Water", which is a Gary Glitter-inspired slab of jukebox pop that sounds like it could have been off of I Love Rock & Roll. As guitarist Ricky Byrd's last musical contribution before quitting the band, it takes the listener right back to 1982.
The album's real gem, though, is "I Want You", which was co-written by Ritchie Cordell and had been bouncing around in Jett's repertoire since 1979, but, here, Jett and the band reconfigure the lyrics and turn in a performance that is, in a word, blistering.
After two top 40 albums for CBS by an artist established as one of the most recognizable rock icons of our time, one must ask "How did this album even fail to chart?"
For an album this solid to not even graze the Top 200 can only be due to an act of aggressive negligence on the part of CBS Records.
The album's real gem, though, is "I Want You", which was co-written by Ritchie Cordell and had been bouncing around in Jett's repertoire since 1979, but, here, Jett and the band reconfigure the lyrics and turn in a performance that is, in a word, blistering.
After two top 40 albums for CBS by an artist established as one of the most recognizable rock icons of our time, one must ask "How did this album even fail to chart?"
For an album this solid to not even graze the Top 200 can only be due to an act of aggressive negligence on the part of CBS Records.
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