Resolution Review – The Hit List

Joan Jett – “The Hit List“

     For my first album of the new year that I decided to explore, I picked someone who I always intended to listen to more of but somehow never did.  I first got exposed to  Joan Jett from the amazing concert film, “Urgh! A music war“.  Her breakneck assault of “Bad Reputation” made me sit up and take notice in a mass of pretty wide ranging musicians.  I picked up some of her stuff back when I still had vinyls but never collected her on CD.  I missed a large chunk of her body of work.  When I saw “The Hit List” it seemed like a good choice because this is an album consisting entirely of cover songs.  From AC/DC and The Doors to The Sex Pistols and ZZ Top, she covers a wide range of genre’s and songs.   It was a solid collection of songs done by a talented performer and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately at the end of multiple listens, this collection feels uninspired.  For such a wide variety of songs I was hoping for something that grabbed me.  All this album really did was to end up serving as background music.  For my tastes, I always like to hear a different spin on a song when a band covers a track.  Lyle Lovett doing the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil”, John Hammond doing a cover of “Murder in the Red Barn” by Tom Waits or Gillian Welch doing “Black Star” by Radiohead.  I wanted to like this album but at the end of the day it did not stand out to me any more than a bar band doing covers.