REO Speedwagon: Life as We Know It : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On Life As We Know It, REO Speedwagon grasps at maturity and falls down. On the surface, this ostensibly ambitious move makes sense: after a dozen-odd albums of peppy midtempo love songs and rockers, the group must have wanted to try something new, if only from boredom. But REO acts as if starting anew is a simple equation that can be solved by pushing the right buttons. The band has called in the songwriting team of Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg ("Like a Virgin," "True Colors"), whose cliché-filled contributions to this album are virtually indistinguishable from those by REO lead singer Kevin Cronin. REO has also upped the grit factor a smidgen in the clinically clean arrangements and has started singing about bad times as much as good times. Voilà, instant breakthrough.

But Life As We Know It replaces one used-up formula with another. Many of the numbers are about long-term relationships gone sour, with titles like "New Way to Love," "Variety Tonight" and "Tired of Gettin Nowhere." Most distressing are the Kelly-Steinberg contributions, especially the hyperactive "Over the Edge" (co-written with REO guitarist Gary Richrath), which sounds painfully like the title tune to Footloose. Kelly and Steinberg's work for Madonna and Cyndi Lauper seemed detailed and honest; their songs here are just plain embarrassing. If this is life as we know it, then perhaps ignorance is bliss.