It's easy to laugh at Def Leppard. There's that name, for a start. Then there's the stonewashed mullets, the one-armed drummer… oh, and the unreconstructed meat-and-two-veg squawk rock. And yet.
And yet, the Sheffield five-piece are the second biggest-selling British rock act ever, after Led Zeppelin. And while popularity is no guarantee of quality, there are times on this double Best Of when said squawk rock is so blatant, so obvious, and yet so energetic and irresistible that you experience a beautiful suspension of the critical faculties – for a blissful moment, you're 13, only not all hung up and gawky, but cool.
"Rock of Ages"' stoned, multi-speed groove, for example, can do this. So can the weirdly chicaning race-to-the-finish of "Rock Rock Til You Drop". Both songs – from their biggest seller, 1983's multiplatinum "Pyromania" – are disarmingly route-one: singer Joe Elliott's never had the most tuneful set of pipes, so the choruses are Slade-esque terrace chants; they mention rock a lot; they keep the verses very short and so off-kilter that, really, they serve only to remind you that another chorus is about to kick in. And the weirdest thing is that at no point whatsoever do these tracks sound formulaic. In fact, so joyously simple are they, that they often sound downright weird; witness the bendy guitars in the latter, the cod-German rapping and resolute unfunk of the former. Rock, and singing about rocking. It's what they do best.
True, it begins to pall after four or five tracks – even they sounded bored by 1992's "Let's Get Rocked" – but attempts to get more sophisticated take the band on a long walk down a short pier. While "Slang" saw them attempt a career-updating "Achtung Baby", with the kind of forced enthusiasm that only the truly panicked ever really muster, their ballads ("Love Bites" being the worst offender) strain, emote, nudge and wink, but don't really go anywhere. And the one new track, their cover of The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset", actually made me crouch into a ball and hug myself with excruciating embarrassment on their behalf.
Lessons then, kids? Do what you're doing, enjoy it, and stick to it. And if you occasionally try something new and fall on your bum, Hell, that's life. But for Christ's sake, leave it off the Best Of.
