A Look Back At Def Leppard's 'Slang'

Here is a very cool feature about Slang, the album Def Leppard released during the hey day of grunge. The article is on the UDiscoverMusic website. Definitely give this a read.

“We knew we couldn’t make a typical Def Leppard album in the mid-90s, Grunge was very much happening and our stuff was anathema at the time." - Vivian Campbell on ‘Slang’: How @DefLeppard Mastered A New Rock Language In The 90s 🤘 https://t.co/eBN6FY6tnK

— uDiscover Music (@uDiscoverMusic) May 14, 2019

Comments

[Jeff]

It's not on my rotation list but I have it. The best song on it is the title cut. The rest of it is forgettable.

[Badland]

💩

[GNR]

Jeff says it best "rest is forgettable" - just a clunker of an album with a couple of songs that are tolerable. I always like the slower,bluesy one at the end of the other edition "Move With Me Slowly". Almost a seedy bar feel to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di07m5IiAiE

[Bkallday]

This was just an awkward release all the way around. Even the couple decent songs on it aren’t really their style, imho. I don’t think they’ve released a good album since Euphoria. But they seem to still have some left in their tank, and I’ve always been a fan so the hope is there that they still have one great one left in em!

[Metalboy!]

Badland said it best.

I bought this when it came out and, man, I didn’t even make it through the first cut and I’ve never listened to the other songs except for the first 30 seconds or so.

It’s just further proof you gotta stay true to your roots.

The Stones did it in 1978 with “Some Girls” where they were able to update their sound adopting elements of Punk and Disco, yet still retaining their signature sound.

At the time Def Leppard put out “Slang”, I don’t think they realized how they still could have kept their signature sound while exploring new sounds of the time.

For instance, they could have incorporated elements of the Glam Rock they love so dearly and Britpop that was big in England around the same time “Slang” came out. Interestingly, those same Britpop bands, such as Oasis and Verve, had huge hits in the U.S. at the time of Slang’s release and shared the same love for Glam Rock as Def Leppard.

This is the route Def Leppard should have gone with “Slang”, a Glam Metal / Glam Rick / Britpop mix, not whatever the h*ll it is, which whatever you want to call it, is unlistenable.