Bebe Buell

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Bebe Buell - Hard Love

By Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck on | From muzikreviews.com

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make this claim; in the world of rock n’ roll musicians, males outnumber females. This is not to say that women can’t do it too, it just seems that men are more apt to pick up a guitar and start trying. Bebe Buell’s life has revolved around rock n’ roll, from when she lived together with Todd Rundgren, through her brief relationship with Steven Tyler, and now, with the release of Hard Love.

This solo album is Buell’s first return to music since 1993, when she worked with the Gargoyles, though her first true solo effort was an EP released in 1981, produced by Rick Derringer and Rick Ocacek.

While I haven’t heard that EP myself, based on this album I don’t think I’ll give it a spin anytime soon.

Hard Love, I suppose, isn’t one hundred percent terrible. I applaud Buell for her efforts to get back to the life she always wanted, in and around rock n’ roll, by releasing this album. But that’s the only thing I can find to appreciate about Hard Love. It would be unfair to say the producer wrote all of these songs, but they sound like they came out of a factory, following a formula to get radio airplay and sell thousands of records rather than concentrate on making art that reflects her creativity and talent. This album is not one that continues to make music as a relevant art form.

“Mother of Rock & Roll” opens the album and sets the tone for every single song to follow. Buell tries to give an impression that she’s a queen among rock musicians and appear as a woman not to be taken lightly. I guess she can pull off that front, more or less; I would think that to be among rock and roll royalty one would need to create a lot more quality music than Buell has. “Heartbeat” is somewhat of a ballad, but is too fast to truly fit that description. It also suffers from the same malady each of the others do, being completely forgettable. With Buell’s abnormally low female voice, “Sugar” sounds very creepy, like the anthem of cougars worldwide. Imagine Buell saying these lyrics to you and you’ll know what I mean; “Did you feel me beside you/Taste me on your tongue/…deep inside me is the place where all your dreams are wrung…you’re mine tonight/you’re my sugar sugar.” And they only get worse. But the worst offender is “I Love A Man In Uniform,” which is based around two chords and hardly deviates. I think I’ve found the epitome of repetition in rock music. It’s like she played two chords and said to herself, “that’ll do” when she was writing this. That is, if the producer wasn’t writing it instead.

There’s nothing wrong with girl power in music. Look at pop for example, where many of the best selling artists are women. This album tries to be one of those girl power albums, and I suppose it achieves that goal, but other than that there’s really nothing else to it.

This is a what-you-hear-is-what-you-get album, because the music is so simple, similar, and unchallenging that if you hear one of these songs, you’ve just about heard them all. There really isn’t a standout track that offers anything different or more interesting. If you like music by women trying to be one of the boys, you’ll like this. If you like disposable pop rock songs, you’ll also like this. If you think of music as art, run and hide.