The 80s were weird, man. Today, people might know Michael Bolton for his dulcet tones on smooth tracks like “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You” or “When A Man Loves A Woman”. But there was a time when Michael Bolton was a bit harder. The peak of his foray into hard rock culminated in the album Everybody’s Crazy in 1985. I’d go as far as to call the album a part of the Glam Metal genre, which you could also say is hair metal. Well, Michael Bolton has quite the mane of hair on the album cover, so it fits.
Everybody’s Crazy was recorded from August-December 1984 and released on March 15th, 1985 from Columbia Records. Now you might think, oh, Michael Bolton is a softie, he couldn’t have written the songs on this album, well, he wrote all nine tracks on the album. As someone who adores this time period of music, the time just after the dawning of heavy metal as the hottest genre and before grunge came along and closed the door is fascinating.
For KISS fans, on every track besides track 6, Bruce Kulick played lead guitar, and you can tell. His hard, driving style that made this time period for KISS so successful is on full display. Across the nine tracks on the album, you get a nice variety. There are hard-rocking tracks like “Save Our Love”, “Everybody’s Crazy”, and “Can’t Turn It Off”. Adding to those are some more Michael Bolton-sounding tracks like “Call My Name”, “Desperate Heart”, and “Start Breaking My Heart”. Surrounding those are absolutely solid tracks like “You Don’t Want Me Bad Enough” and “Don’t Tell Me It’s Over”.
The album didn’t lead to a hard rock career for Bolton though. His later albums veered more into the adult contemporary style, but this was a special almost lightning in a bottle moment. For people in my generation, Bolton was more known for his turn on the track “Jack Sparrow” by the Lonely Island than his other music. I grew up seeing Michael Bolton in commercials late at night for Time Life compilations of his more soulful later career music. So to hear him singing over the top of some hard rock/Arena Oriented Rock tracks was not only a pleasant surprise, but I really love this album.
His next album The Hunger would cement Bolton as a superstar of the contemporary genre but it still had some of the makings that Everybody’s Crazy gave us. But he would never really return to the style of this album. Going as far as to think to not re-release the album. Bolton didn’t want to confuse or alienate his contemporary fans but ended up re-releasing them. The title track of this album made it on his Greatest Hits album.
The 80s were a weird time with Michael Bolton recording what amounts to a heavy metal album. Maybe he should get back to it these days? If you’re asking me for my favorite track, “Can’t Turn It Off” is easily my favorite from the album. On the scale of headbanging to dangerous while driving, if “Can’t Turn It Off” comes on shuffle, I might have to save up to pay that speeding ticket.
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