Search - Lee Aaron :: Powerline: The Best of Lee Aaron

All You're Gonna Need

Chad Ouimette | Ottawa, ON | 01/24/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Powerline: The Best of Lee Aaron. Released in 1991, and just as the title says, it is all of the Lee Aaron from the 80's you're going to need, unless you are a die hard fan or own all the original albums.



With that said, let's talk about this album. It has all of her biggest hits, which weren't many but nonetheless they were still great. One of the few women in hard rock who actually rocked and had a great voice (i.e. Lita Ford, blech!) mixed with her beauty (see the videos for "Metal Queen" and "Under Your Spell" and you'll know what I mean), this album still holds up today with any other hard rock MALE artists from the 80s work, and the songs on this set prove it. It shows you what a great a voice she really had,(still does too) from the rockers ("Lady Of The Darkest Night", "Metal Queen", "I Like My Rock Hard") to her ballads of raw emotion ("Peace on Earth", "Barely Holdin' On", "Only Human"). Her voice screams to croons to operatic howls, oftentimes all in one song. She's the best.



Back to the album, for a greatest hits album, it still manages to contain a few clunkers, most notably "Texas Outlaw", a duet with a guy that I've never heard of, as well as "Hands On" and "Sweet Talk", they are especially lifeless. They should have been tossed in favour of "Under Your Spell" from her 1984 debut THE LEE AARON PROJECT, or even her duet with Helix vocalist Brian Vollmer ("Look Me Straight in the Heart"). So this compared with the amount of low quality songs that DID make the cut bring this album's star rating down a lot. But you can't deny the quality music that IS here. Her voice is never better than on "Barely Holdin' On", it's a great example of what I was talking about earlier with her voice changing dynamic over and over throughout the song.



After her 1994 album EMOTIONAL RAIN, which I also recommend you check out, if you can find it, Lee Aaron changed musical direction drasticaly. Last I heard she was doing jazz and swing music, with no intenions of doing another rock album, exemplified in her 2000 release SLICK CHICK. As of 2004/2005 she has been doing pop music, so I have heard, and has a new album of pop songs out now. Seek it out if you wish. But for those of you who just wanna rock and remember her rock n' roll days (and miss them) this is the album you need to own. 10/15"