Hotel California

It's a question as old as Hotel California itself: What *is* Hotel California? Is it purgatory? Is it addiction? If you ask me, I'd say it's a 1976 studio LP by American rock band Eagles. With that out of the way, I can't say this was truly terrible, I just really don't care about Eagles. I mean, to list some positives, the title track is really great, yes its kind of played out, but it really is sort of an all-timer. Evocative lyrics and a hell of a guitar solo seal the deal, but I don't have to tell you this, you have definitely heard this song. While I don't agree with the seemingly extremely common belief that this is the only good song on the album, I think the gap between it and second place, Victim of Love, is noteworthy. Victim of Love is a pretty good rock song, it's catchy and driving and whatnot, it's just no Hotel California. Aside from this, Pretty Maids All in a Row is a pretty decent ballad, but the rest of the album just doesn't really do it for me. Eagles hit a kind of perfect commercial rock sweet-spot on this, as far as generating hits goes, but it's just not a formula that I think results in a particularly interesting album.

prvu pjesmu svi znamo, ostale dosta odudaraju od nje i, premda su pristojne, teško da će ikoga oboriti s nogu

Wouldn't you know, I wrote an undeservedly long review for this one (mostly about how I didn't know there were *two* Dons in the Eagles, one being Henley (no direct relation to the shirt) and one being some guy I've never heard of, yet somehow neither is Don McLean (who I like fine, by the way)) and my computer restarted and I lost it. But that's fine because the Eagles are bad. My main points:

- This is 70s country to me and IDK why everyone (wiki) calls it straight-up rock.
- Vocalist ranking (based on these songs): Meisner > Frey > Walsh > Henley
- Hotel California is probably my favorite Eagles song, but I still dislike it very much. Perhaps if they weren't as overplayed as they are, I'd give this a 3, but it is very overplayed and I've been hating the Eagles for a long time, so I give it a 2. Maybe I'm starting to get freer with the 2s. If there's another Eagles album (god forbid), maybe it'll be a 1!!

Another not great album to cap off a week of not great albums. Only 3 stars cos of the title track.

Nonstop bangers. They could re-release this album as a Greatest Hits album and I wouldn't bat an eye.

Badass technical guitar work, some of the best harmonies in rock, (mostly) good songwriting, and solid band cohesion make this a Top 10 album for me.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I'm with the Dude on this one.

A killer title track which everyone has heard a thousand times, followed by other songs that pale in comparison but are totally fine, if a bit bland at times. The album tracks don’t pop but make for easy listening. Nothing to get mad about!

Some good stuff here!

The first half of this album could have been 5 star, loved it. 2nd half was good but seemed to slow down too much for my liking

I knew a lot of these songs already - a very enjoyable album

4 ⭐️

I cannot recall ever listening to this album, yet I knew virtually every song. When I was a small, small kid, I definitely listened to a ton of Eagles, especially Greatest Hits vol 2 (which explains knowing four of these), The Long Run, and Hell Freezes Over (which explains another three of these). Ah, there we go, only “try and love again” hasn’t been permanently etched into my brain. I knew I’d know the first 3 big singles, but it was a pleasant surprise getting hit with nostalgia on every other song, too. “Hotel California” was one of the first songs to make me realize lyrics can have deeper meanings, too. (Before that, I was not probing Kriss Kross for meaning. They’ll make you jump. Full stop.)

Also, in the “life is funny” category: distinctly remember listening to “the long run” on cassette tape while I played video games, age 10 or so. Today, how’d I listen to this album? On my phone while playing video games.

Hard not to give that a 5: I’ve loved all these songs for a long time. Maybe not “life in the fast lane,” which sounds the most dated, but some of the others hold up. I may have to hand in my hipster card.

I will also say, apart from any nostalgia: these guys can write a great final minute of a song. I’m not confident the songs in whole would stand on their own if I was just hearing them for the first time, but the last minutes of Hotel California, New Kid in Town, and Try and Love Again introduce musical ideas that are the best parts of the songs (the entire solo of HC is its best part), the final minute of Wasted Time complicates its lyrics interestingly, and the final minutes of Victim of Love and Life in the Fast Lane just thump you over the head with their respective best parts, which is never a bad songwriting idea. The final minute of The Last Resort is a fitting coda to the song and album. I award no bonus points to the final minute of pretty maids. You really blew it, pretty maids.

A clear masterpiece. Though not my fav...

Just like the debut, two great singles (Hotel California, Life in the Fast Lane) and a middling single (New Kid in Town) surrounded by awful to middling tracks. At least this album felt like it went by quick despite multiple songs dragging on way too long. Wasted Time felt like it wasted my time, and the reprise was wholly inconsequential. Pretty Maids All in a Row had awful singing, and The Last Resort was about 4 minutes too long.

The Eagles are a singles band. Don't ever bother with whole albums, just listen to their greatest hits records.

I really was going in with negative expectations on this one given how overplayed the title track is, but it really wasn't all that bad. Catchy songs, some good themes... Not bad. 3/5

It sounds like some dudes were sitting around and decided to form a corporation in order to manufacture tubes of overly-saccharine rock-music goo to feed into the hot, grubby maw of the radio-listening public.

I’m at a 10.

I always assumed this would get high marks from me whenever it came up – my dirty little secret is that I’ve never listened to the full album. Everyone on the planet knows “Hotel California”, but past that, I’ve never listened to another Eagles song ever. I know about the talents of Don Henley, Joe Walsh, and the rest of the band, and I know that a compilation album of theirs is the best-selling album of all time in the U.S., so I figured the talent had to be potent, and the hype had to make sense. I always assumed this was going to be a 4 at bare minimum.

Boy, I wasn’t expecting this though – this is up there with Band on the Run for me as a seminal 70s album, and that’s on a first listen. Someone else has probably written words that could praise these compositions better than I ever could. Perhaps there’s an irony that I’ll end up writing more about Mariah Carey than I will about an album like this, but I just… ugh. The only real “eh” here is “Pretty Maids All in a Row”, and even then, I still liked that one a lot. Every other track hits like crack – there isn’t a miss among the other 8, and that includes the lovely orchestration of “Wasted Time (Reprise)”.

It’s about as good of a 70s rock album as I’ve ever heard with this sort of style – it’s got a nice country lean that just attunes me even more to it, and I truly think the mixing is perfect. Every single instrument sounds more crisp than I’ve heard on almost any other 70s album, and it just makes each track feel that much better to listen to. The lyrics are great too, and the emotion gets pulled out from the vocals in a way that makes them both feel even better. I’m serious when I say that there hasn’t been a 70s rock album that’s worked this well for me since Band on the Run, and in terms of an initial impact, I feel oddly close to how Rumours absolutely blew me away.

I can’t bottle up that feeling into words that can truly aptly describe my currently rattled brain, but just know that this is a high, high recommendation. I have been sleeping on the Eagles for far too long, and I need to listen to more of their stuff. They are far, far beyond just “Hotel California” as a single song, and even if most of the tracks here do qualify under “70s dad rock”, I can only hope the rest of their discography is just as good “70s dad rock”, because I’ll rock with it as long as it rocks. As far as this album goes, this is a 10, through and through – just a fantastic album.

The title track is probably one of the greatest songs ever written but the remaining album fall a little flat

Very pleasant music.

I'm with The Dude on this one.

Good lord it's full of hits.

A lot of classics on this album. Solid Eagles all the way down.

The ultimate dad rock album, there's not a single person born in the 70s or 80s who's dad did not own this on either vinyl or cassette. This was the soundtrack to road trips, always was, always will be... Opens up with 3 huge all time songs in "Hotel California", "New Kid In Town", and "Life In The Fast Lane" before settling into a deep groove like the slow sad vibe of "Wasted Time" and its reprise and the straight up rock and roll of "Victim of Love", the rest kind of follow what came before.

A victim of its own monster success often leads to people turning on it, but this is an easy 5 star album.