Kiss: 10 Awesome '80's Songs You've Never Heard
In our previous Kiss piece on hidden gems of the '70's, reader comments confirmed this fact: observers of Kiss, fans and haters alike, are a passionate group. The comments section of that article is jammed with opinions and criticisms and the idea to produce a similar list for the '80's was first germinated there by a couple of different readers. This is that list. The early '80's were a strange time for Kiss - Gene was off trying to become a movie star media mogul and dealing with rapid hair loss, Peter was gone, Ace was going and Paul was left minding the shop. The first two albums of the '80's, "Unmasked" and "Music from the Elder' were critical and commercial failures but that was probably a blessing in disguise as it forced the band to try to claw back some credibiity with the excellent "Creatures of the Night" album. Unfortunately, however, the heaviness of COTN would prove to be a blip as Kiss then moved towards more of a 'hair metal' vibe from "Lick It Up" forward. During the decade of the '80's Kiss filled 8 albums with songs that fall, generally, into one of three categories singles, lesser known gems and filler with arguably far too much of the latter. Fear not though my friends, your humble servant has spent considerable time combing through the '80's albums track by track (a painful process at times) to find the hidden gems beyond the singles and early music vids that we all know. As with my previous Kiss article the tracks are presented by order of release date from oldest to youngest and is not a one through ten ranking as we normally understand it. Also, as I am the writer and get to make up the rules, I decided that each '80's album had be represented. This created some challenges and caused omissions that I'll be only too happy to hear about in the comments section. Away we go...