Pat Benatar - Tropico

Funny I thought I'd written about Pat Benatar before ... apparently not. Well, let's make up for lost time and start with her 1984 album Tropico. This was a gear change and an attempt to sort of stay ahead of the curve. Now to be fair, despite always liking some of the songs I heard on the radio - especially those early hits, I'd never picked anything up by her.

Over the last couple of years I've found most of her early efforts, and for the most part they were good albums. It was the combination of Pat's vocals, and Neil's music that really worked - even when it was a cover, like "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" written by Eddie Schwartz. Considering the treadmill the band was on, cranking out an album a year like sausages from 1979 to 1985 and the consistency of the band's output is nothing short of spectacular.

Seriously.

By 1984 the rock and roll of the late '70s was moving toward big hair, and the early new wave had already crashed to the beach and the tide was going out. Rock was changing and a year earlier Pat Benatar scored pretty big with the studio track "Love is a Battlefield" from her Live from Earth release. With Tropico that song served as a blueprint of sorts and served as a lead in to "We Belong" and more or less cemented the turn away from her vixen of rock and roll to being an adult contemporary artist - with a bit more edge than most of her contemporaries.

One thing about Pat's releases her band was pretty consistent during her glory years. Heck, drummer Myron Grombacher had played with Neil going back to his days with Rick Derringer. This consistency carried through to the music, or at least I like to think so.

The results were a mixed bag. Listening now, there are some pretty great moments on the album. "We Belong" being the best of the bunch and honestly one of her most memorable songs, but there were others like the haunting "The Outlaw Blues" and the solid "Painted Desert" that were also really good. The "Ooh Ooh Song" is a hard one for me. This a such a great call back to the skinny tie new wave from a few years earlier I really wanted to like it ... but even with the benefit of almost forty years I'm still ambivalent at best to this one.

With the added benefit of hindsight this was nearing the end of Pat Benatar as a commercial concern. Tropico would be her last platinum studio album. Still those early albums had some great tunes.

There's no doubting her place in rock and roll and she and Neil were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2022. Too bad they didn't call themselves The Pat Benatar Band, then her longtime collaborators and band mates likely would have gotten the nod too. Although trying to sift through who would be eligible would have been tricky ... do you go for the original guys or the later members?
Can of worms.

Sadly, not everyone belongs.

Yeah, I did that.