{"id":338557,"date":"2025-10-28T14:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T14:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/338557\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T14:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T14:38:12","slug":"zz-top-flies-too-close-to-the-sun-on-afterburner-retro-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/338557\/","title":{"rendered":"ZZ Top Flies Too Close to the Sun on ‘Afterburner’: Retro Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

For its glorious first four minutes and two seconds, ZZ Top<\/a>‘s\u00a0Afterburner<\/a>\u00a0achieves the impossible: flying higher than its big brother\u00a0Eliminator<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For another three and a half, the Texas trio at least match the heights of the highly daring 1983 album which made them superstars. After that? Things get a bit dicey. Perhaps like Icarus, the band flew a bit too close to the sun.<\/p>\n

After being rewarded so richly for boldly revamping their Tex-Mex blues rock with synths and programmed drums on Eliminator\u00a0hits such as “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs,” ZZ Top understandably dove deeper into technology on their 1985 follow-up.<\/p>\n

Afterburner’s dazzling album opener “Sleeping Bag” pushes all the new toys even further to the front, even adding hip hop-style scratches to the mix. It’s an audacious case of doubling down on a winning bet, and it pays off handsomely.<\/p>\n

Read More: ZZ Top Went Behind Their Producer’s Back to Finish ‘Afterburner’<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The next song, “Stages,” is nearly as good, adding a new level of unabashed pop catchiness to the formula. Unfortunately, after that opening one-two punch the fresh ideas start to arrive less frequently.<\/p>\n

A sense of formula-following creeps in on tracks such “Woke Up With Wood,” “Planet of Women,” “Dipping Low (In the Lap of Luxury)” and the ultra-peppy “I Got the Message.”<\/p>\n

Your mileage may vary wildly on the album’s showcase ballad, “Rough Boy.” The guitar solos are, of course, gorgeous and unassailable. It might also be one of Billy Gibbons<\/a>‘ finest pure vocal moments. But does the icy, keyboard-dominated backing track sound too much like Invisible Touch<\/a>-era Genesis<\/a>, or worse, late ’80s Rod Stewart<\/a>?<\/p>\n

There’s still plenty to enjoy here.\u00a0Dusty HIll<\/a>‘s vocals and some particularly rip-roaring guitar riffs add much-needed grit to the tracks “Can’t Stop Rockin'” and “Delirous,” and the drum-heavy “Velcro Fly” shows the band admirably trying out some new dance floor-friendly moves.<\/p>\n

But after an opening volley that made it seem like topping the lightning in a bottle magic of\u00a0Eliminator was an actual possibility, Afterburner\u00a0understandably falls a bit short of new ideas and inspiration.<\/p>\n

This downward trend would continue on ZZ Top’s next album, 1990’s unfortunately aptly named Recycler<\/a>, after which the trio would bring more organic elements back into their sound.<\/p>\n

Ranking Every ZZ Top Album<\/p>\n

From the first album to ‘La Futura,’ we check out the Little ‘ol Band From Texas’ studio records.<\/p>\n

Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For its glorious first four minutes and two seconds, ZZ Top‘s\u00a0Afterburner\u00a0achieves the impossible: flying higher than its big…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":338558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,975,167169,11853,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-338557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-retro-album-reviews","11":"tag-reviews","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115452307265985176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}