Pat Benetar - Precious Time


Look, i'm the first in line to love an album everyone hates and yak up a hairball all over some supposedly great terribleness, but sometimes an album is just "meh" and there's nothing you can do about it.

We already established i love Pat Benatar, and her third album Precious Time is totally listenable (if chocked full of awkward songwriting and an unnecessary cover of Helter Skelter), but even i can't stretch my definition of a great album enough to include it. 

For starters, i don't have any idea how half the songs fit the concept of Precious Time. I guess if we really twist it around and consider all of the songs examples of how we waste the little bit of time we have then it all sort of makes sense, but a lot of these songs are super weird character pieces about an evil genius kid who shoots people when he get angry, an "actor" who somehow has a Mercedes but never gets cast in anything and somehow faux Reggae adds to the meaning, and more than once there's hints that the characters are British for no reason i can suss out. We won't even consider the OCD feeling i get when her name looks like an acronym.

I don't like the fact that i agree with the Auditors of Classic Rock that Promises in the Dark and Fire and Ice are the only songs worth keeping, but the rest of the songs are all weird in some way. Some of the lyrics are really clunky, Just Like Me is total filler, i didn't come here to hear Pat Benatar sight read random New Wave tracks, you know? It's frustrating because there's at least 1 cool thing about every song, but none of it is consistent. 

I think i know what it is. This is Pat Benatar's best selling album ever. Why? Because Crimes of Passion was an amazing album and everybody wanted more, but i bet they were under maximum pressure to churn out an equally great album comprised of crap some random executives liked as opposed to having enough time or freedom to really make something good. Not playing wise, the music is phenomenal, it's the lyrics and phrasing and what are you talking about that drag the whole thing down. I don't think they ever got a day's distance from any of these songs to say "i'm just not feeling it." It all kind of feels like Pat showed up, they handed her a song, and she tried her best to Pat Benatar it. 

Am i wrong? I certainly could be, and maybe it will grow on me, but i'm sad to say this one's a "meh." I certainly don't hate it, but as far as time being precious and all, there's certainly more exciting stuff from all over her catalog to enjoy. 

Definitely have to come back to it at some point, but from a completely different perspective. Oh well, can't win 'em all, at least there's some exciting stuff rocketing toward me at whatever the current speed of the US Postal Service happens to be. Laters.

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