Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor.

You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle.

Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4?

You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Holland classic originally performed by The 4 Tops.

So there you have it, love is less a battlefield, more a crap shoot. The album itself is also a bit of a crap shoot because the production, songwriting, and thematic relevance of any particular track is all over the place. That does not in any way imply they are bad, it just means that continuity is completely absent. It looks like an album, is smells and tastes like an album before and after digesting it, but it sounds like your older sister dubbed 9 songs from 3 different slumber parties onto a blank cassette tape back in '85. Still, once you learn to let that go and just enjoy each song for what it actually is, it's Pat Benatar and it's all pretty awesome.