Look What the Cat Dragged In (20th Anniversary Edition)

iTunes Review

It is rare that an entire genre — an entire era, in fact — can be summarized with a single album, but that's precisely the accomplishment of Look What the Cat Dragged In. All that is good, bad, and ugly about hair metal’s “young, dumb, and full-of-fun” attitude is contained on Poison’s 1986 debut. The huge, headbanging hooks. The sugary pop gloss. The power ballads. The garish guitar solos. The bathroom stall poetry. Somewhere between the “anything goes” attitude of punk, the crotch-out blues of Bad Company, and the shallow-end philosophy of the Sunset Strip class of ’86, lies Poison. Between “I Want Action,” “Talk Dirty To Me,” and “Cry Tough,” Look What the Cat Dragged In alone contains more party anthems than most bands achieve in an entire career. For all the detractions you can throw at it (and the list is long), the songs endure. Poison may be eternally loathed by critics, but they grasped a fundamental principal of rock’n’roll — that its soul lies in the rock god fantasies of adolescents — and therefore, Look What the Cat Dragged In still triumphs on full blast at strip clubs, parties, and cruising cars.