Scorpions – Love At First Sting: #859 of best 1,000 albums ever!

Why is Scorpions’ Love At First Sting on my best 1,000 albums ever list?

Well-crafted hair metal. You might say it’ll rock you like… a powerful force of nature.

What does Scorpions’ Love At First Sting mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?

“Rock You Like A Hurricane” is one of the best songs of the hair metal era.

There’s something earnest and even wholesome about the way these Scorpions fellas rock out, as opposed to the dirt-under-the-fingernails way that Sunset Strip hair metal feels. And that earnestness kind of helps elevate into the stadium-ready banger that it is: it’s loud, it’s fun, and it works whether you’re fist pumping out of the window of your car blasting down the highway or if you’re mom or dad-style rocking out, fist pumping at the sports stadium with your kids.

There’s something hilarious about the European accent the Scorpions boys have in declaring the song title via the chorus of “BAD BOYS RUNNING WILD”! They sound wild, but adorable! But seriously, it’s a fun and hard charging hair metal sound, allowing you to rock out to it while having a little smile while doing it, if you like. And I like!

“Still Loving You” shows the band’s surprisingly sophisticated ability to craft a delicate rock ballad (more on this below re: ”Winds of Change”) that can still kick some bottom at the same time. The opening is very Zeppelin-esque in a way that totally works, and it builds nicely from there.

Pop culture stuff that’s somehow related to Scorpions’ Love At First Sting

If you weren’t around at the time, it’s hard to explain what a big deal Scorpions’ “Winds of Change,” off of the Crazy World LP, was in 1990. The Berlin Wall had come down, and vast change was coming for millions of people who had lived under the thumb of Soviet occupation and oppression for decades. “Winds of Change,” while slightly cheesy, did a good job of representing the emotion of those times. And it was plastered all over MTV and the radio and even news reports and specials and such.

But there’s a completely bonkers wild backstory to that song allegedly involving the CIA and… a lot of other crazy stuff. It’s chronicled in the thoroughly enjoyable Winds of Change podcast if you’re interested in learning more.

What’s even crazier is that I’m writing these words within 24 hours of Russia invading Ukraine. In 2022.

Ill winds are blowing these days, I’m afraid.

My thoughts are with the people of Ukraine tonight.