Alice Cooper
Hey Stoopid

THE REVIEW

ALICE COOPER - HEY STOOPID (1991, SONY)

TRACK LIST:

01) HEY STOOPID
02) LOVE’S A LOADED GUN
03) SNAKEBIT
04) BURNING OUR BED
05) DANGEROUS TONIGHT
06) MIGHT AS WELL BE ON MARS
07) FEED MY FRANKENSTEIN
08) HURRICANE YEARS
09) LITTLE BY LITTLE
10) DIE FOR YOU
11) DIRTY DREAMS
12) WIND UP TOY

Awesome.

If I had to limit myself to using just one adjective to describe this album, I would have no hesitation in defining it as such.

After the great success of “Trash” (1989), which relaunched the name of Alice Cooper at the top of charts worldwide, the great charmer delights us with a super-produced album that, in terms of sounds and themes, represents the ideal evolution of the content expressed in the previous studio work. Fascinated by the sound proposed by bands like Motley Crue, Guns N’ Roses, and Cinderella, in which Alice at the time recognized his natural heirs, the legendary singer fully immerses himself in their perspective, updating his formula and adding to the succulent ingredients mixed by the aforementioned bands that touch of grandguignol that has always distinguished his works. Whereas “Trash” stood out for its numerous references to sex, in “Hey Stoopid” our artist expands his range of action, transporting the listener into a sort of technicolor nightmare, where everything, especially the encounter with our fears, becomes possible.

Listening to this album is like entering a gigantic horror tunnel: we can scream, be afraid, tremble, but we want to go on, discover what's next, so we can then conclude, breathe a sigh of relief, relax... and then start all over again. The songwriting probably cannot be compared to the elaborate and biting style characteristic of the great '70s productions by Alice Cooper (see “Love it to Death,” “School’s Out,” and “Billion Dollar Babies”), but this too is part of the game: in “Hey Stoopid” the aim is immediacy, focusing on very specific messages. Such is the case with the title track, supported by a beautiful video and recently defined by the singer himself as “An Alice Cooper's version of “We are the world”,” where Alice expresses all his disdain towards teenage suicides, which too many people foolishly blamed on rock’n’roll. Other memorable pieces from the album include the wonderful power ballad “Love’s a loaded gun,” the pyrotechnic “Feed my Frankenstein,” written in collaboration with the rugged Zodiac Mindwarp (and featured in the soundtrack of the film “Wayne’s World” - “Fusi di testa,” in which Alice also materializes in a parody of himself), the dreamy “Die for you,” and the more sustained “Dirty Dreams,” “Little by little,” and “Snakebite,” heard as the theme song for the Italian presentation of the TV series “X-Files” in 1998.

In any case, it is not an easy task to identify the best track on the album, given the high overall quality of the compositions. Numerous artistic collaborations make “Hey Stoopid” a work of music of absolute value: on guitar, we see the alternation of guitar heroes of the caliber of Slash, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Stef Burns, and Vinnie Moore; on bass, the great Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue) stands out, while the honor of accompanying Alice in the execution of vocals is granted to an authentic parade of stars: Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Sebastian Bach (Skid Row), and Dave Mustaine (Megadeth).

Despite a clearly superior quality, this masterpiece did not achieve the same success in the States as its predecessor, disappointing the expectations of Sony Records; fortunately, high sales in Japan and the Old Continent (especially in Italy) allowed this work to rise from the undeserved status of a “commercial flop” that many naive people continue to erroneously attribute to it. For many, this work represents yet another demonstration of class by Alice Cooper, while for others, it may seem like a small diversion towards a genre that was very much in vogue at the time, namely glam metal: in my opinion, “Hey Stoopid,” in the eyes of anyone who has “fully lived it,” thanks to its touching melodies and the unstoppable power of its sound is simply legend.

(Enrico Rosticci)