Some catchy tunes, but too bloated for a hits album
3
By BrianSwaldi
I've always enjoyed the Ramones hits when i hear them. They're catchy, fun and make for good driving tunes. Though I can barely understand what Joey Ramone is singing, their songs still sound neat.
Aside from about 10 songs in their entire catalog, however, the rest of their music is grating, rote, and dumb. Most of the Ramones songs have short, dumb lyrics and they're super repetitive. Most songs are practically mono-syllabic and they just repeat a key phrase over and over again like your average Kiss song - another band with very dumbed down lyrics. They have the same basic formula for every song. Short tune with driving guitar chords that don't really deviate, change or explore and a handful of lyrics. The words didn't really even seem to matter much. They were more cosmetics than any kind of idea or meaning they were trying to get across. There really wasn't much talent needed to throw together a Ramones album. It was more personna than musical skill. They're a far less talented band than they get credit for.
The problem with this album is that it's bloated. A hits album for a good band doesn't have so many throwaways and such a low average star rating. All of their good songs added together still clock in at less than 15 minutes of music. That's 2 to 4 songs for normal bands/artists.
The stats for this album are zero 5 star songs, one 4 star song in Blitzkreig, seven 3 star songs, four 2 star songs and 8 throwaways. That is a shameful number of junk "hits" for a band afforded such lofty status. Most of the throwaways are stacked towards the end of the album as they tried desperately to get enough short songs to fill up an average length album. By the end of this experience, my mind was numbed - and not in a good way.
