Def Leppard - “Songs From The Sparkle Lounge” (Visual CD Review)
Def Leppard the English rock band from Sheffield formed in 1977, and became one of the top-selling rock bands throughout the 1980s, selling over 65 million albums worldwide. And now they’re back with a brand new album.
So we thought what illustrator do we have in our crew that can take this album and interpret it in a totally unique way?!, and then it came to us, our edgie Italian illustrator from Dublin Mario Sughi.
Def Leppard - “Love” uploaded to youtube by defleppardgirl36
Mario “Let me start by saying that Def Leppard’s “Songs From The Sparkle Lounge” is certainly an album for the lovers of Heart more than for the ones of the Mind! So when I was invited to review three songs from the album I decided immediately to start from the very symbolically powerful song “Love” whose chorus is this!
“Love, love look what you’ve done to my heart
Oh, I should’ve known from the start
That, you’d go and tear it apart
Oh, and now you’ve desert me”
Wow this must be real love in all its “most beautiful and most melodramatic rhetoric, this is what I thought of as I was listening to it. And it would be difficult to find a more celebrated theme than the above in all the history of pop and rock roll!
I asked myself if this was deliberate?. Possibly a statement by the band (and a very significant one in the economy of the rest of the album) about how you can express yourself and be able to play a highly popular subject one more time. Def Leppard seem to have found the answer to this: they don’t care, they just play it for the joy or sorrow of their soul, and they do it in great style. The Lyrics one way (serious dramatic almost rhetoric) the music in the opposite direction (powerful romantic and youngish)! Great!
Def Leppard - “Go” uploaded to youtube by defleppking
My second illustration has been mainly inspired by the opening song of the album: “Go” This is how the song starts:
“This is a truth adjust
Has to be told, it must
We spread amongst us so the world can hear it
We got to get it right
This time, if we just fight
Innocence starts tonight
If we can heal it”
Then follow a chorus:
“So go,
Just go
Just go”
What is the truth that has been told to us? And what or whom are we supposed to fight? I listened to the entire song, and I didn’t find the answer there. The song doesn’t tell us. The song just suggests we go and fight. But against whom? In the name of what!? And why? Who is the enemy? What is this innocence about? I felt a bit uneasy with this. The same uneasiness sometime I feel when I’m reading the news in a daily newspaper. So just go! And fight! Like the icy eyes girl in my illustration!”
Def Leppard - “Nine Lives” uploaded to youtube by oeelliott9
Finally I would say that a strong sense of fatalism is felt (and I am not surprised) following on from the first part of the album. This is reproduced in its fullest level in the final sentence of “Nine Lives” and my very last illustration is clearly about this!
“Nine lives, nine times to die
I’ve been bitten once
but I won’t be shy twice
Nine lives, nine times to die
It’s Russian roulette
With every roll of your dice”
Thanks God the Def Leppard are able to play even those final lines with some powerful music… otherwise we would be left literally(as in my final illustration) in great despair, I would say! lol I’m joking of course :)”
Above illustrations and text by Mario Sughi www.nerosunero.org
Def Leppard - “Songs From The Sparkle Lounge”
Track listing
1. Go
2. Nine Lives
3. C’mon C’mon
4. Love
5. Tomorrow
6. Cruise Control
7. Hallucinate
8. Only The Good Die Young
9. Bad Actress
10. Come Undone
11. Gotta Let it Go
12. Love
Label Universal
The band are;
Rick Savage
Joe Elliott
Rick Allen
Phil Collen
Vivian Campbell
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