http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/_/id/7307163/defleppard

Def Leppard

Rock Of Ages: The Definitive Collection

Originally released: 2005
Universal Music Group

The greatness of Def Leppard can be summed up in four words, and not gunter
glieben glauten globen. The four words are: Girls totally liked them. This was
such a formal breakthrough in metal terms, it can hardly be overstated. Def
Leppard delivered pop thrills for girls: They sang harmonies, they pumped up the
beat to near-disco levels, they wrote songs as tight as their Union Jack shorts,
they pranced in videos. Who can forget Phil Collen's spandex-clad ass shaking
back and forth to the beat in the "Rock of Ages" video? They took as much from
David Bowie and T. Rex as they took from Led Zeppelin. As a result, Lep became
arguably the first metal band to enjoy a sexually integrated audience, inventing
a template that so many lesser bands spent the Eighties trying to imitate. Lep
had it both ways -- the boys wanted to be them and the girls wanted to rock
them.

Usually, when an Eighties metal band puts out a two-disc anthology, the second
CD is just there for you to laugh at, but Lep really did crank up enough hits to
fill this sucker out. Nobody remembers their 1990s tunes, but "Stand Up (Kick
Love Into Motion)" is one of those phenomenally sad and moody ballads Def
Leppard specialized in. "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad" was great; "Let's
Get Rocked" was garbage, featuring the infamously ass lyric "I suppose a rock's
out of the question." "Make Love Like a Man" is somehow left off the album, but
only about twelve fans will even notice. Which leaves their Eighties hits, the
real reason anybody will crave this collection. "Hysteria" holds up as one of
the most chillingly morose pop hits of the decade, with Joe Elliott yelping,
"Say you will, ooh babe, say you will" over a sleek six-note techno-metal riff.
It's an immaculate distillation of the Eighties synth-pop aesthetic that
compares with the best of New Order or OMD. Lep hit similar peaks with
"Photograph," "Animal" and "Love Bites," which oddly became their only Number
One single, even though everybody liked "Pour Some Sugar on Me" a lot better.
"Foolin' " is an intriguing attempt to write a Seventies-style sword-and-sorcery
acoustic epic, the kind of old-fashioned metal trudge Leppard made obsolete. All
in all, it makes "Let's Get Rocked" easy to forgive.

ROB SHEFFIED
(Posted Jun 02, 2005)

TRACK LIST
1 	Pour Some Sugar On Me
2 	Photograph
3 	Love Bites
4 	Let's Get Rocked
5 	Two Steps Behind
6 	Animal
7 	Heaven Is
8 	Foolin'
9 	Rocket
10 	When Love And Hate Collide
11 	Armageddon It
12 	Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad
13 	Rock Of Ages
14 	Hysteria
15 	Miss You In A Heartbeat
16 	Bringin' On The Heartbreak
17 	Switch 625

1 	Rock Rock (Till You Drop)
2 	Let It Go
3 	High'N'Dry (Saturday Night)
4 	Too Late For Love
5 	No Matter What
6 	Promises
7 	Mirror Mirror (Look Into My Eyes)
8 	Women
9 	Another Hit And Run
10 	Slang
11 	Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion)
12 	Rock Brigade
13 	Now
14 	Paper Sun
15 	Work It Out
16 	Die Hard The Hunter
17 	Wasted
18 	Billy's Got A Gun

©Copyright 2004 Rolling Stone