Cheap Trick

It's a fact that when Cheap Trick peels off a good tune, nobody can touch them. And on this 1982 album, they deliver not one, but two fantastic Cheap Trick numbers. Sure the rest of it is a little, uh, weak, but the Beatles-perfect "If You Want My Love" and the gloriously lurid "She's Tight" both rule. Even "I Want You" and the title cut will appeal to the diehards.

After 1980's raucously self-indulgent All Shook Up, many fans who'd been seduced by the
irresistible power pop of In Color and Heaven Tonight began hopping off the Cheap Trick
bandwagon. One on One suggests that although guitarist-songwriter Rick Nielsen's AC/DC
fixation continues unabated, there remains cause for hope. Which isn't to say that One on
One doesn't offer its share of depressingly moronic cuts. Take "I Want You," for... More >

Yeah, I'd written them off too--until I heard "If You Want My Love" once and immediately made it twice, after which it went on automatic replay in my head for forty-eight hours. The most eloquently eclectic Beatle tribute ever recorded, it sets the tone of this one-of-a-kind arena-rock band's raw, ersatz tug of war, and though Rick Nielsen's Lennonesque tunes and Robin Zander's McCartneyesque screams do grate (and not against each other), I'll take it cut for cut over Paul's sweet, authentic one. Inspirational Sex Rant: "I wanna live in your body." (Grade - B)