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Released

Like the Eagles, Bad Company released a number of excellent singles without ever making a single front-to-back great album. This compilation, originally released in 1985, gathers pretty much everything a normal person needs from this crew. Bad Company featured vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke, both formerly of Free; guitarist Mick Ralphs, ex-Mott the Hoople; and bassist Boz Burrell, who had spent a year or so in King Crimson. Their brand of hard rock was not quite as blues-drenched as that of their former groups or their peers, but it still had an atavistic crunch and a thumping groove, over which Rodgers’ gritty voice soared. Songs like “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” “Can’t Get Enough,” “Bad Company,” “Shooting Star,” “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy” and “Ready for Love” will be played on classic rock radio and in bar jukeboxes as long as terrestrial radio stations and bars exist, because they’re good, mostly simple songs with just-this-side-of-placeholder lyrics and choruses you’ll remember for the rest of your life after, say, the tenth time you hear them, plus the occasional surprise nugget of virtuosity.

Phil Freeman