Busted (1990)
1.Back N'Blue
2.I Can't Understand It
3.Wherever Would I Be
4.If You Need Someone
5.Can't Stop Falling Into Love
6.Busted
7.Walk Away
8.You Drive, I'll Steer
9.When You Need Someone
10.Had to Make You Mine
11.Rock 'N' Roll Tonight
Following the unexpected commercial rejuvenation of Lap of Luxury, Cheap Trick, for once in their career, opted for something verging on continuity. Busted marked the first occasion the band appeared content to replicate a proven formula—an irony, given their earlier reputation for sardonic unpredictability. Whether this constituted calculated pragmatism or creative inertia remains open to interpretation, but the results, while competent, betrayed an air of faint resignation.
The sonic architecture of the album is conspicuously similar to its predecessor, albeit with marginally fewer fingerprints from external songwriters. In theory, this grants the band more agency; in practice, the distinction is cosmetic. The production remains glistening and radio-baiting, a calculated blend of AOR smoothness and guitar crunch, engineered for mass palatability rather than critical reverence.
Of the material on offer, Can’t Stop Falling Into Love stands out—not necessarily for innovation, but for its efficiency. It nearly breached the Top 10, a feat that says more about the inertia of late-'80s pop-rock than the song itself. Walk Away, featuring Chrissie Hynde, momentarily conjures the spectral presence of Cheap Trick’s earlier emotional heft, while Had to Make You Mine hints at their long-dormant pop sensibility, albeit somewhat buried on the track list.
Elsewhere, the album teeters between serviceable and perfunctory. Wherever Would I Be aspires to balladry in the mold of The Flame, but falls short of that song’s commercial alchemy. If You Need Me, with assistance from Foreigner’s Mick Jones, is another stab at crossover credibility, respectable in execution if not in ambition. Conversely, the title track and You Drive, I’ll Steer strain under the weight of their own calculation, offering little beyond a reminder that not all ideas deserve second drafts.
Taken in total, Busted is less a creative statement than a professional gesture. It deserved better than the apathy it received, perhaps, but only just. As a coda to their flirtation with late-era chart success, it is oddly appropriate: glossy, competent, and unmistakably weary. The comeback, such as it was, had run its course.
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