Standing on the Edge (1985)


 

  1.Little Sister
  2.Tonight it's You
  3.She's Got Motion
  4.Love Comes
  5.How About You
  6.Standing on the Edge
  7.This Time Around
  8.Rock All Night
  9.Cover Girl
 10.Wild Wild Women

 

By 1985, Cheap Trick had transitioned from chart-toppers to journeymen, plying their trade in a musical landscape that no longer looked kindly on former arena rockers. The band’s mid-‘80s fate was a common one: from sold-out stadiums to the ignominy of state fairs and club circuits. But where some artists responded with retreat or reinvention, Cheap Trick leaned into the noise. Standing on the Edge, their eighth studio album, is the sound of a band clinging to relevance with white knuckles—and a synth-laced smile.

Jack Douglas, the architect behind their blistering 1977 debut, returned to the producer’s chair, raising hopes that a return to stripped-back greatness might be in order. That hope was...misguided. Standing on the Edge has little in common with Douglas’s raw, rough-and-tumble predecessor. Instead, it opts for glossy ‘80s excess: gated drums, electronic flourishes, and party-rock anthems adorned with neon rather than leather.

The mission here, if one can call it that, is celebration. Rock All Night, She’s Got Motion, and Wild Wild Women make no pretense toward introspection. They are songs for convertible rides, boom boxes, and bad decisions—unapologetically so. And while the critics had little use for such fare, and audiences even less (the album quickly slipped into obscurity and, ultimately, out of print), the music itself offers more than just period trappings.

Little Sister opens the record with a convincing snarl, Zander’s vocal venom still potent beneath the production gloss. Cover Girl sports one of Nielsen’s most tightly coiled riffs of the decade. Tonight It’s You, meanwhile, is a gleaming, aching power ballad that—had the cultural winds been blowing a different direction—might have finally given the band their long-awaited second act. Alas, timing is everything, and Cheap Trick’s timing was off by a couple of years and a continent.

Signs of strain are visible in the liner notes. Mark Radice—an unknown quantity to most fans—was enlisted to help write songs. Worse, Rick Nielsen’s name was misspelled. A small indignity, perhaps, but telling. The band, once Epic’s golden boys, now felt more like contractual obligations.

Yet Standing on the Edge is not without merit. In fact, approached on its own neon-lit terms, it’s a surprisingly enjoyable listen. No, it’s not Cheap Trick or Heaven Tonight. But judged by the standards of 1985—when pop-metal and studio polish reigned supreme—it’s a respectable entry, even if it ultimately vanished into the cut-out bin of history.

In a decade defined by image and artifice, Cheap Trick gave us an album that tried, however awkwardly, to party like it was still 1979. It didn’t really work as hoped. But it wasn’t for lack of effort.


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