Track Listing

1. 20th Century Boy
2. Rock On
3. Hanging On The Telephone
4. Waterloo Sunset
5. Hell Raiser
6. 10538 Overture
7. Street Life
8. Drive-In Saturday
9. Little Bit Of Love
10. The Golden Age Of Rock 'n' Roll
11. No Matter What
12. He's Gonna Step On You Again
13. Don't Believe A Word
14. Stay With Me

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24267 in Music
• Released on: 2006-05-23
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
On their highly anticipated new album, Def Leppard have created a heartfelt and hard rocking tribute to their musical heroes of the late 60's and 70's - the Kinks, Badfinger, T. Rex, David Bowie, Sweet, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Free, Faces, and Thin Lizzy. Recording essential versions of the music that influenced their youth, the band have brilliantly merged the 'Now with the 'Then' to create a buzz that can only be summed up in one word: YEAH!

Amazon.com
While most of their teen peers were embracing nascent '70s U.K. punk with all the snotty 'tude they could muster, Sheffield's Def Leppard instead infused then-moribund metal with bracing pop smarts. Having long since sold a gazillion or two records with that formula, the '80s superstars pay homage to the eclectic, chart-savvy tastes that spawned it on this collection of covers, recharging their contemporary fortunes a bit in the bargain. Their takes on Me Decade standards like The Faces' "Stay With Me," Badfinger's "No Matter What," and T Rex's "20th Century Boy" may be arguably too faithful, right down to Joe Elliot's often dead-on vocal chameleon routine. But elsewhere they perform some admirable pop archaeology, imparting a darker edge to David Essex's spooky "Rock On" and pumping Blondie's "Hanging on the Telephone," one-hit-wonder John Kongos's riff-fest "He's Gonna Step On You Again," and Sweet's "Hell Raiser" full of patent Lep energy. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

Either you get it or you don't
Yeah! is what a cover album should be. Not simply songs that were once popular and then redone note for note by a new band. Def Leppard reconstructs to what American ears might be obscure songs. These are songs that were instrumental (pun intended) in forming the band's taste in music in the 1970's. Either listeners will buy into the concept that these are song Def Leppard liked and wanted to do or they will complain that they didn't cover obvious songs or just retread one fo their old albums.

The end result is a solid album, frankly one of the best they have done for a long while. Perhaps it is because they could "be someone else" rather than the particularly contrived X album which was more of an unintended self-parody.

Yeah! is a great album for not only Def Leppard fans, but fans of the 1970's UK rock scene.

THE LEPPS ARE BACK
I've never completely understood why classic-rock artists with catalogs as deep as Styx and Toto feel compelled to record an album of covers. But among the latest bands to pay tribute to their musical influences is Def Leppard, and Yeah! actually makes far more sense than either Styx's Big Bang Theory or Toto's Through the Looking Glass. In fact, it's easy to hear Def Leppard's roots in these 14 British pop-rock songs from the early and mid-1970s - including fully Leppard-ized versions of the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset," T. Rex's "20th Century Boy," David Essex's "Rock On," the Faces' "Stay With Me," Free's "Little Bit of Love" and Sweet's "Hell Raiser." The members of Def Leppard have always proclaimed their debt to that glam-slammed era, and not a single one of their choices sounds out of place here. It's just too bad they didn't do even more with ELO's "10538 Overture" and Badfinger's "No Matter What." Notably absent is anything by Queen.

Despite the limitations of recording a covers album - the band has to remain at least somewhat true to the originals to make its point - these songs are a natural fit, and Yeah! comes off sounding almost like a traditional Def Leppard album which evey they were having trouble producing. Of course, by the time this thing played out, I was ready to slap on High 'N' Dry, Pyromania or Hysteria. Don't get me wrong: This is a fitting tribute to the artists who inspired Def Leppard to become Def Leppard. But the band's own distinct brand of music speaks for itself -- and, in turn, has influenced countless other artists so much that a Def Leppard cover will one day belong on some other band's own version of Yeah!.

Great Songs- Played Great
I picked up this latest Def Leppard CD as a birthday present for my good friend. I am so glad we got to listen to it together that afternoon at work, because this album is great.
Since the radio stations these days play nothing worth even mentioning many times new releases slip through the cracks, and I might have missed this one.
This is a fine tribute to some true masterpieces of British rock.
Every original version looms large in my collection and the Def's cover them in such a way as to actually make them their own. This is a fine example of how a great band has been influenced by other outstanding writers and musicians.
Give this a real listen.