Why is Whitesnake on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
I don’t know where I’m going, but I sure know where I’ve been.
Some stats & info about Whitesnake
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, British Bands, Hair Metal, Heavy Metal, Metal, Arena Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Whitesnake released? 1987
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #629 out of 1,000
Whitesnake on Spotify
So why is Whitesnake on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
If there’s a song that’s the musical equivalent of a time machine designed to go to one specific year (1987, because hey, why not?), it would be Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again.”
It’s loud, bombastic, and confidently leans into the rails of being flat out cheesy, self-important, and over-the-top hair metal. And yet.
And yet.
It’s incredible. It rocks. It rocks hard. Like a drifter it was born to walk alone. Come on, you know the lyrics.*
* And if you don’t, you do now. You’re welcome.
And as for the “Here I Go Again” music video, it’s got everything: ladies, cars, ladies on top of cars, a hair metal band rocking out while doing hair metal stuff… and did I mention the ladies and the cars?
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recall that there were many, many terrible hair metal ballads during this era. What really elevates Whitesnake is that it also contains “Is This Love,” which is one of the very best hair metal ballads of the ‘80s.
The music video for “Is This Love” is completely different from “Here I Go Again,” because it also includes a hair metal band doing hair metal stuff but instead of having ladies and cars, it has a single lady going to lead singer David Coverdale’s swanky late ‘80s flat for, presumably, an evening of romance and late 1980s-style dancing.
There are a lot of other fun tracks on Whitesnake, such as “You’re Gonna Break My Heart Again,” which I strongly feel should have been leveraged for a comedic movie montage at some point.
“Give Me All Your Love” is prototypical hair metal, and it’s super fun, rocking, and pleasing at that.
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with Whitesnake
A “Whitesnake jean jacket” is referenced several times in Old School, the hilarious low brow comedy starring Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Ellen Pompeo. Specifically, Luke Wilson’s Mitch brings up the jacket as something that Pompeo’s character, Nicole, wore in high school. Which, of course, was also the central reason why Mitch was far too intimidated to tell her that he liked her.
Thus was the power of Whitesnake, especially when fused with the might of denim fashion.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.