Unlike such critically hyped nonsellers as the Iron City Houserockers or idiosyncratic nostalgists like Ozzy Osbourne, Loverboy are a truly popular hard-rock band. Last year, their debut album went platinum, and the group began filling arenas before its record company realized what was happening. Loverboy made it without publicity and, as all hard rockers like to claim, with lots of hard work – touring, touring, touring.

As a phenomenon, therefore, Loverboy are interesting: self-made stars. As musicians, they're smart but limited–small emotional and melodic range, the familiar flaws of hard rock. Yet on their second LP, this Canadian band accomplishes something startling: they make self-consciousness sound like a tough-guy's credo.

Loverboy start side two of Get Lucky with disarming self-deprecation ("Don't ask me how/But guess who hit the big time"), and the rest of the record is only slightly less worthy than that sharp phrasing. Indeed, all of Get Lucky's riffs are crisp and tight, and if singer Mike Reno is imitative in the high-whine, Journey-Styx-Foreigner manner, he's also more willing to take the blame for romantic mishaps than any of the loverboys in those superstar groups. (RS 363)

KEN TUCKER