Hello everybody! The numbers have been crunched and it is time to reveal the results of the Maidenfans Bruce Dickinson album ranking! Sorry for the delay, took me a second to recover from the holidays and I thought it would be better to do this closer to the release of The Mandrake Project anyway.
To once again coincide with a new album release, our next game will be
JUDAS PRIEST. Please PM me your Judas Priest ranked from #1 (best) to #18 (worst). Any lists that ignore this format or don't include every Judas Priest studio album will be ignored! Any comments to this post with rankings will also be ignored, they must be sent via PM! Also,
no revisions. You have until the
end of the Bruce Dickinson ranking game. I will do a "last call" when it's about to wrap up. I'll post a formal thread with all of this information as well, but you can get in early if you'd like.
Before we get to the results, a special thanks to all who participated:
No trivia contest this time because the answers are pretty obvious. There are no ties and I think everybody could guess which albums did not receive any last place rankings and which albums did not receive any first place rankings. There may be some placement surprises, but overall I think most folks know how this one is going to go.
OK. Without further adieu, here is our first reveal:
1:
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3:
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5:
6: Tattooed Millionaire
Highest score: 3 (
@Poto @TheMercenary)
Lowest score: 1 (@Just about everybody else)
Bruce's debut album coming in last is probably no surprise to anybody here. Most people know the story: Bruce was asked to record a song for the new Nightmare on Elm Street movie (Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter) and that project expanded into a full album recorded during Maiden's first full year off. On the surface, it seems like it should be the perfect project. Maiden were on a creative stride, you've got a NWOBHM veteran producing, and Janick Gers is kind of the perfect choice considering his background with Gillan and the early NWOBHM scene. The result is somewhere between Aerosmith and Motley Crue, which probably isn't what people are looking for with Bruce (and was proven by the fact that his solo career didn't really take off until he started making pure Metal albums).
As you can see by the score spread (nobody ranked it in the upper half of the discography), the biggest downfall for Tattooed Millionaire is that nobody is out there really championing this album. Other lower ranked Dickinson albums have pockets of hardcore fans, but I think even Millionaire's most ardent defenders aren't going to pretend that it is among Bruce's finest work. It ended about 15 points below the next album, which is the 2nd largest gap between two albums.
I will say this in defense of the album (and as one of many users who ranked it last): I almost put this album second to last purely on the grounds that it is pretty successful in doing what it's trying to do. The songs on here are very well produced and very well performed. In retrospect with Janick joining Maiden, it's great to hear him on a single guitar album with Bruce. You hear him more in his element here than on his first few Maiden albums. Lots of big open chords, more traditional bluesy leads, more room to play and less worries about getting in the way of the other guitarist(s). This is the first album where we hear Bruce's raspy voice that would be used on the next two Maiden albums, I think it fits here better than on the next albums but also I never disliked the style as much as most fans seem to.
The presence of the All The Young Dudes cover reveals what this album is all about. It's not so much trying to go for the 80s hair metal thing, but more of the 70s glam rock that influenced Bruce. It's a good fit - Bruce's theatricality goes well with that type of music. I hear a lot of David Bowie and Slade, but also some Aerosmith and AC/DC (less interesting). I think the biggest downfall is the songwriting though. Some of these songs are just ridiculous, Licking the Gun, Dive Dive Dive, some of the worst dreck in Bruce's catalog. I think if he would have leaned more into songs like Son of a Gun or even the title track (awesome glam rock with a really intricate instrumental) it would have made for a more interesting album. By the time you get to the back half of this album it turns into major filler. But also, given how this came together, I wouldn't be suprised if a lot of these songs were just quickly put together. Seems more like something for Bruce to do before getting back with Maiden.
