Joan jett greatest hits4/7/2023 ![]() ‘Everyday People’ has a deviously simple AC’DC style riff and an infectious nursery rhyme vocal that gets you hooked instantly. That’s not to say it’s all dumb fun as the Desmond Child co write ‘I Hate Myself for Loving You’ is classic 80’s rock with a polish. ![]() Listening to ‘(I’m Gonna) Run Away’ there’s little difference in structure to some of the earliest Kiss songs. What makes these songs hit the mark is Joan really lives and breathes rock n roll attitude and it comes out in the simplest of songs like ‘I Want You’ to superb effect. Next minute she’s all teenage angst, buzz saw guitars and attitude with ‘Bad Reputation’, it’s all quite wonderful. ’Love Is Pain’ has some Tom Petty Influences and Joan really takes hold of the song the way only a woman can. To be honest it took a few spins of this disc to realise what I had been missing! So I was more than surprised to hear the sonic blast of ‘Cherry Bomb’ and ‘School Days’, two songs that wouldn’t have been out of place on any Ramones record. Despite this flaw, Jett Rock is a good document of a true rock & roller and is chock-full of classic rock & roll.No doubt due to the covers of ‘I Love Rock n Roll’ and ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me’ I had a false image of Joan Jetts musical output, and as much as I admired her she seemed a little too close to the whole 70’s glam era occupied by the likes of Suzi Quatro and The Sweet for my taste. The main problem with the disc is the track sequence, which seems to be entirely random and causes some unfortunate moments of whiplash like when the modern hostile sounding tracks "Fetish" and "Spinster" segue into her innocent cover of "Crimson and Clover." A simple chronological progression would have been much more logical and enjoyable. Unlike most of the other Jett collections, all the songs are taken from the original albums. The rest of the disc rounds up all the hits ("I Love Rock n' Roll," "Bad Reputation," "Light of Day," "This Means War," "I Hate Myself for Loving You") as well as solid album cuts like her collaboration with Paul Westerberg ("Backlash"), her cover of CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" from her otherwise ill-advised covers album, the stomping "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" from Bad Reputation, and the tough "Spinster," which was co-written by Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna. In between it takes the best tracks from each of her albums (oddly only picking two from her best record, I Love Rock n' Roll, while picking three from the still good but inferior Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth) and throws in a couple of rarities like her rollicking cover of the Mary Tyler Moore theme "Love Is All Around," the previously unreleased "Watersign" (from an album she recorded in 1999 and is still on the shelf), a duet with Greg Graffin of Bad Religion on Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" originally intended for the Tank Girl soundtrack, and 2001's tribute to science fiction movies called "Science Fiction," which is easily the worst song on the record and should have been replaced by Jett Rock's most glaring omission: "Victim of Circumstance" from I Love Rock n' Roll. The collection draws on her entire career starting with two tracks from the rare fan club-only release 1979 ("You Can't Get Me ") and ending with 1999's Fetish. If you want to pay the money, there is (almost) nothing but excellent rock & roll on Jett Rock. Jett recorded some of the best hard rock of the '80s, and people should be able to get a hold of it easily. The fact that it was released only in Japan (and seems to be the only hits collection in print in 2003) is a real shame. ![]() Jett Rock: Greatest Hits of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts is the strongest collection of Jett's work to date. ![]()
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