Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies (1973)

Alice Cooper has a reputation of being the number one rocker that Christian circles have attacked against because of his alleged satanic performances. From today's perspective, Cooper's music, especially the 1970's music, is quite mild rock music. The music is really theatrical and there are strong similarities to glam rock. However, the lyrics are probably what made Alice Cooper the least favourite musician of the Christian circles. This album includes topics ranging from horror to sexual harassment and even necrophilia. Also, I don't think it helped that on stage, Alice Cooper was decapitated with a guillotine, he had fake blood all over the place and the stage prop included whips, surgical table and hatchets. Also, just being a bit glam and wearing make-up probably wasn't to the liking of the Christians back in the 70's.



Personally, I got interested in Alice Cooper's music as a young pre-teen. Anything to do with monsters, horror and rock n' roll appealed to me at that stage and seeing him in Wayne's World really made a difference to a ten year old me who was just learning to play the guitar. Feed My Frankenstein is still one of my favourite Alice Cooper songs. I ended up buying this album a lot later when I found it with a very cheap price among some second hand CDs in a Finnish record store. I really should have this kind of album on vinyl, but at that stage I wasn't too strict on the format.

The 1970's Alice Cooper really does sound more like glam rock than hard rock, let alone metal, that he is also sometimes associated with because of the appearance and the topics in his songs. Nowadays, most people remember Alice Cooper from his 80's album Trash. Nevertheless, there were some significant hit songs already in his early career. Most notable is probably School's Out.

On this album, there are two amazing hit songs, namely Billion Dollar Babies and No More Mr. Nice Guy. I remember both of these songs from my childhood despite the fact that it was really difficult to find music to listen to that you didn't own yourself. These songs still stand out from the rest of the album as something special. The sounds seem to be more polished than on the other tracks and the choruses are very catchy.

As I already said earlier in this discussion, there are some tough topics on this album. Raped and Freezin' is about sexual assault, Unfinished Sweet about fear of dentist and I Love the Dead about necrophilia. The title track and of course the whole album name refers to the fact that the band was really surprised by their enormous success. They had never expected they could become so popular with people throwing money at them. What's very surprising about this song that the folk musician Donovan sings on this track.

I think some of the things Alice Cooper has on his albums seem a bit childish now. I don't really listen to these albums that much anymore. Saying that, especially the hit songs on his albums are amazingly composed pop-songs that have catchy melodies and great sounds. I think Alice Cooper definitely has his place in every self-respecting music collector's collection.

Listen to the album on Spotify.