Latest Release
- OCT 4, 2024
- 4 Songs
- The Dirt Soundtrack · 1989
- Girls, Girls, Girls (Deluxe Edition) · 1987
- Greatest Hits (Deluxe Edition) · 1985
- Too Fast for Love (Deluxe Edition) · 1981
- The Dirt Soundtrack · 1989
- Girls, Girls, Girls (Deluxe Edition) · 1987
- The Dirt Soundtrack · 1981
- The Dirt Soundtrack · 1989
- Shout at the Devil · 1983
- Greatest Hits (Deluxe Edition) · 1985
Essential Albums
- At first glance, Mötley Crüe’s second album is incredibly misleading. The pentagram on the sleeve trumpets satanic panic and virgin sacrifice, but the iconic title track is a warning, not an invitation. That part about virgin sacrifice, though? Well, let’s just say that parents of teenagers in 1983 were well advised to lock up their daughters. The deception continues on the sci-fi spoken word intro “In the Beginning,” which positions Shout at the Devil as a concept album. But the members of Mötley Crüe were never that cerebral. The album is all animal magnetism, street fights, and naked lust. The lead single, “Looks That Kill,” tells the real story. Replete with nasty riffs and deadly women, it’s not only the album’s thematic linchpin—it’s a preview of the band’s entire career. The caged models and warrior queen featured in the song’s video popularized the concept of video vixens and all the scantily clad gyrating the term implies. Mötley Crüe didn’t invent this busty trope—or even perfect it—but they showed their hair metal peers and minions where the smart money was in the early MTV era. Released as the third single, “Too Young to Fall In Love” doubles down on all of the above and pays off huge. Propelled by a monster Tommy Lee drumbeat—and a killer riff by guitarist Mick Mars—it might be the best song Crüe bassist and ringleader Nikki Sixx ever wrote. Though the Crüe was largely defined—musically, at least—by its decade-long string of hit singles, Shout at the Devil has more satisfying deep cuts than any of their subsequent records: “Red Hot,” “Bastard” (a favourite of Tipper Gore’s PMRC), “Knock ’Em Dead, Kid” (about the time Sixx got his ass kicked by undercover cops), and “Ten Seconds to Love” all bang hard, even after 40 years.
Albums
- 2000
- 1989
Artist Playlists
- There are bands with debauched pasts—and then there’s the Crüe.
- The L.A. bad boys helped put the sleaze in hair-metal videos.
- L.A.'s sultans of sleaze play with their hitmaking alchemy.
More To Hear
- Tommy Lee and John 5 on “Dogs of War.”
- Nikki Sixx & Tommy Lee discuss making the Mötley Crüe biopic.
- The origins of the Monterey Pop Festival and Coachella FAQs.
- Mötley Crüe fears, Seinfeld love.
About Mötley Crüe
Formed in 1981, Mötley Crüe epitomized the hunger and grime of Sunset Strip rock; at the peak of their fame, the quartet’s offstage antics garnered nearly as many headlines as their music, which fused the high energy of punk with the squealing guitars of metal and the audacious attitude of glam rock. Their 1981 debut, Too Fast for Love, melded metal’s larger-than-life presence with power pop’s hookiness; on Shout at the Devil, released in 1983, the band spread their wings and flaunted their darker side, as menacingly catchy tracks like “Too Young to Fall In Love” and “Looks That Kill” combined with the group’s outrageous looks—and a touch of occult imagery—to make Vince Neil, Mick Mars, Nikki Sixx, and Tommy Lee some of the early music-video era’s best-known faces. Theatre of Pain, released in 1985, turned up the glam, and its piano-led ballad “Home Sweet Home” remains one of hard rock’s most potent lighter-raisers; its follow-up, Girls, Girls, Girls, saluted the harder edge of rock-star living, strip clubs, and life on the bad side of town. After Sixx had a near-death experience in late 1987, Mötley Crüe took a break, re-emerging in 1989 with the towering Dr. Feelgood, which threaded the commercial aspects of metal and rock on the storming title track, the breezy “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away),” and the careening “Kickstart My Heart,” which addressed Sixx’s brush with mortality in full-throttle fashion. Mötley soldiered on during the decades that followed, releasing the tell-all autobiography The Dirt in 2001; Neil and Lee took breaks from the band’s relentless touring before the core four members reunited in 2004. Mötley Crüe may be elder statesmen of rock—The Dirt became a movie in 2019, and they’ve headlined multiple Vegas residencies—but they blazed a trail for bad boys from all genres.
- ORIGIN
- Los Angeles, CA, United States
- FORMED
- January 17, 1981
- GENRE
- Hard Rock