“Hysteria” by Def Leppard | Album Review

Let's step back into the 80s, in the name of loooovvveeeeeee.

This album review steps back into peak pop-metal 80s to revisit one of the most polished rock behemoths ever made.

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Genre: Rock, Metal, Pop

Label: Mercury

Release Date: August 3, 1987

Vibe: 🤘🤘🤘🤘

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👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

If you think “yacht rock” is an insulting term (and, if you scroll through the comments, some of you definitely do), let’s talk about the term “pop metal.” What is it, exactly? Pop music with booming drums and enough guitar solos to appeal to enough men? Anti-establishment attitude packaged for an establishment-leaning audience? Songs that sound better when they’re sung by dudes with feathered hair and torn jeans? I’m not asking these questions out of scorn or spite, but rather to try and understand the real reason this hybrid “genre” exists in the first place. The grandeur and absurdity of the 80s pop metal movement have more in common with a label like the Marvel Cinematic Universe—it gives grown men the excuse to act like cartoon characters, all while being adored by millions worldwide. There are worse gigs, if you can get it.

Pop metal’s peak was a three-year period between 1986 and 1989. In that stretch, albums like Motley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood, Kix’s Blow My Fuse, Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and New Jersey, and self-titled releases from Whitesnake, Winger, and L.A. Guns charted and sold well. The combination of sleazy, guitar-driven arena shakers and outsized power ballads would become well-worn tropes in the years after, but, for a brief moment, that aesthetic was everything to rock fans and the labels and radio stations that catered to them. The shine and swagger still sound darkly seductive, even if a lot of the songs are polished to within an inch of their lives. During a decade that wore excess like a badge of honor, pop metal is maximalism at its most committed. Every exaggeration is executed with absolute conviction. Every note grabs you by the shirt collar, spritzes you with hairspray, and dares you not to be entertained.

No band understood how to work pop metal’s core appeal better than Def Leppard. Formed in Sheffield in 1977, the group didn’t begin to hit their stride until 1981’s High ‘n’ Dry, which was, not coincidentally, produced by Robert John “Mutt” Lange. His fingerprints were all over 80s rock radio, from the luscious top-end of those gang vocals to the perfectly placed snares and kicks in the mix. You can hear it in his work with AC/DC and Foreigner, but, more importantly for this post, in Lep’s “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak,” which became one of the early omnipresent videos on MTV in 1982. After that came Pyromania, a Diamond-certified blockbuster that featured two Top 20 singles, “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages.” Production on a follow-up began immediately in 1984, though mostly without Lange, at least to start. Instead, Def Leppard turned to Jim Steinman, who worked on Bat Out of Hell with Meat Loaf. The sessions were a slog. According to lead singer Joe Elliott, “[Steinman] wouldn't adapt and we wouldn't compromise.”

Then, after months of meandering and eating up studio time, tragedy struck. On December 31, 1984, drummer Rick Allen lost control of his Corvette while driving through the English countryside. The crash tore his left arm from his body. He was 21. Doctors initially re-attached it, but a subsequent infection forced a full amputation. Initially, Allen thought his days as a drummer were over. “I felt defeated, self-conscious, wanted to just disappear,” he said later. “But my family, friends and hundreds of thousands of letters from all over the planet put me in a different head-space. I discovered the power of the human spirit. And that was a springboard into where I am now.” With the support of his bandmates, he soldiered on. A custom electronic drum kit that enabled him to play snare and tom fills with his feet was built. After hours and hours of physical therapy, he made a triumphant return to playing live in 1986. The rest of the band cried during that first show back. Who wouldn’t?

While all that was going on, Hysteria still languished behind the scenes. Mutt Lange was also the victim of an auto accident that put him in the hospital for several weeks. Elliott struggled through a bout of the mumps. The drinking, drugging, and general carrying on had hit a high point, even by the band’s lofty standards. Even with all that, the perfectionism didn’t fade. A track like “Animal” was supposedly demoed more than 30 times, with Lange content to build it and other songs literally, chord by chord. “[Lange] really pushed us to do something different. The first thing he said was, ‘We can’t make ‘Pyromania 2’, because every other rock band in the world is doing that. We’ve got to dig a bit deeper, and it’s gonna be a lot of hard work,” guitarist Phil Collen said. “Jimi Hendrix probably could have done it in his sleep. But we mere mortals have to work hard at it. But it paid off. Because here we are, 30 years later, still talking about it.” The album ultimately cost around $5 million.

Every dollar shows up in the mix, especially if you’re listening to the recent digital remasters, which make every track sound 20 feet tall. You can nitpick over the mass-market nature of these songs, but you can’t not admire the technical precision on display. The broad appeal is a big part of what made it a slow-burn global smash, with sales topping 12 million in the States alone and 20 million worldwide. I say “slow burn” because, initially, sales were sluggish despite great expectations. The lead single, “Women,” was a relative disappointment because it wasn’t necessarily representative of the album’s overall sound. It’s moody, bordering on sinister, and features a groove that sounds like the rhythm section is trying to chisel it in stone. But, beneath the surface, you can hear the active genre-blending pivot the band was undertaking. The echo-laden vocals and tempo shifts prioritize the suspenseful build-ups that fuel several of the LP’s hits.

Listeners of classic rock radio will know these ones off by heart. You have “Rocket,” with its new wave-y and spacey percussion, “Gods of War,” the group’s sprawling political statement, and “Armageddon It,” which has to be one of the strangest-ever titular euphemisms for sex in recorded history. There’s also “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” the band’s most recognizable song, a glam-rap hybrid that ended up peaking at No. 2 on the Hot 100. I mean the rap part literally, too. Elliott told Rolling Stone that the song was partially inspired by the Run-D.M.C.-Aerosmith crossover “Walk This Way” that had blown up the year prior. Thrown into the recording process at the last minute and finished in under two weeks, it was a calculated ploy to at least replicate, if not top, the flavor of the moment, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be an emblem of pop-rock ecstasy. As Def Leppard learned, consumers care that your music is catchy, first and foremost.

But, even with all those great tracks in mind, the best two cuts off Hysteria are also its most 80s moments. First, there’s “Love Bites,” a towering power ballad that builds to the kind of soaring chorus that gave the decade part of its signature sonic aesthetic. The layered vocals wash over you like a tidal wave of symphonic heartbreak, buttressed by guitar parts that are impeccably interwoven, like alternating brushstrokes on a canvas. I’ve been going back and forth on this for the past few days, and I’m reasonably confident in saying it’s their finest hour, or at least in the conversation. “Hysteria” is cut from a similar cloth, overflowing with aching, longing melancholy. It’s also a lighter touch than most of the other material on this LP, with an incredible guitar shimmer that proves Def Leppard wasn’t just sweaty swagger clad in torn denim. They could, when called upon, show a softer, more vulnerable side.

For all its precision and polish, Hysteria never loses its pulse. That separates it from the legions of imitators it inspired into the 90s and beyond. Yes, the studio wizardry makes those hooks glisten and shine like the neon sign outside your favorite sleazy bar, but it also retains a lot of the attitude and grit from the days when the band wasn’t sure they’d make it, including right after Allen’s accident. But they successfully turned trauma into triumph, all without losing their essence. Updating it and reformatting it for arena-sized gatherings, sure, but the essence didn’t necessarily change. It’s part of the reason the album continues to resonate with pop fans, producers, and radio programmers as much as the metal heads. Even the grunge generation, a group that formed part of their identity around rejecting this very kind of bombast, couldn’t deny how airtight these songs were. Posture all you want, there’s no denying how easily these tracks can still get stuck in your head.

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