Just because Pat Benatar's longtime guitarist and husband Neil Giraldo gets top-level billing here doesn't mean anything has really changed. Giraldo has backed her since her heyday and while he may have changed his brand of instrument - it looks like a custom Tele copy, judging by the cover - they still turn out music that is essentially the same as the arena rockers of the early '80s, and Benatar sings it the same fashion as before. Which means that Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo Live is part of that celebrated tradition, the "greatest hits live" album, and that may not be a surprise since it is subtitled the "Summer Vacation Tour Soundtrack" which kind of implies that it taken from an oldies tour.
Tropico is American rock singer Pat Benatar's fifth studio album, and sixth album overall, released in late 1984. It peaked at No. 14 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart and produced the Grammy-nominated Top Five Pop hit "We Belong". Other well-known songs from the album include "Painted Desert", "Outlaw Blues" and "Ooh Ooh Song" (also a Top 40 hit). A Spanish version "Ooh Ooh Song" was on the B-Side of the US single and appeared also on her 1999 compilation, Synchronistic Wanderings. Tropico was Benatar's sixth consecutive Platinum-certified album in the United States. This album is Benatar and Giraldo's first attempt to move away from Benatar's famed "hard rock" sound and start experimenting with new "gentler" styles and sounds.
This is a great reminder of what the best 1980s pop/rock sounded like. It includes most of Pat Benatar's hits, with the unfortunate omission of I Need A Lover, the passionate melodic churner from 1979. It also includes her best album tracks like the poignant Hell Is For Children but her excellent version of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights is missing. Benatar specialised in powerful rock numbers with strong power chords and catchy hooks, delivered to full effect in her belting voice, like Heartbreaker, Hit Me With Your Best Shot and Love Is A Battlefield. In this sense Benatar was something like a female Meat Loaf and in fact not too far from Bonnie Tyler. But there were also the quiter songs in a more tender voice, like the synth-driven We Live For Love, a pop classic. With 18 tracks, this is a better compilation than Best Shots with its 15 tracks.
A radical departure from the type of slick pop/rock she'd been embracing on albums like Tropico and Wide Awake in Dreamland, True Love found Pat Benatar embracing blues and early pre-rock R&B. Opting for less production and a much rawer approach, an inspired Benatar ditches the synthesizers and keyboards and sounds like she's leading a bar band in a Chicago dive. From Albert King's "I Get Evil" to B.B. King's "Payin' the Cost to Be the Boss" to Charles Brown's "Please Come Home for Christmas," the results aren't breathtaking, but are generally honest and soulful. Quite clearly, this was an album Benatar was eager to make.
Best Shots is a Platinum-certified greatest hits album released by the American rock singer Pat Benatar in 1987 in Europe and in an updated version in 1989 in North America. It peaked at No. 67 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart, two years after the album peaked at No. 6 in the UK.
Precious Time is the third studio album by American rock singer Pat Benatar, released on July 6, 1981. It peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, chart and produced the top 20 hit and lead single "Fire and Ice"; the song that would later win the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1982 and reached No. 17 on the U.S. Pop chart and No. 2 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart. The albums second single "Promises in the Dark" reached No. 38 on the U.S. Pop chart and No. 16 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart. Precious Time was also Benatar's first album to chart in the UK, reaching No. 30.
Gravity's Rainbow is the ninth studio album and tenth album overall by American singer Pat Benatar. It was released in 1993 on Chrysalis Records. The album is named after, though bears little other relation to, the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name. It peaked at No. 85 on the US Billboard 200. Gravity's Rainbow would be Benatar's last studio album recorded for Chrysalis.