| Released | 25 July 1980 |
|---|---|
| Label | Atlantic |
| Genre | Hard rock, heavy metal |
| Duration | 42:11 |
The jaw-dropping thing about Back in Black is that it is listed frequently as the second best-selling album of all time, topped only by Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Wikipedia’s List of best-selling albums[1] finds that it sold 30.1 million copies, some 21.1 million short of Thriller, but ahead of other noted prolific sellers including Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Michael Jackson’s Bad, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
Where Thriller was targeted at the broadest possible market, though, AC/DC seems to court only its regular audience with Back in Black. I remember the singles You Shook Me All Night Long and Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution featuring in the chart rundown, but with highest positions of 38 and 15,[2] they didn’t set the UK Top 40 alight, and so the album’s appeal wasn’t founded on singles success.
It may be that Bon Scott’s death imbued the album with a dark lustre beyond the gloss of its black cover, but the music on it isn’t such a departure from that of Highway to Hell to account for the phenomenal uptick in sales.
You Shook Me All Night Long is Back in Black‘s Touch Too Much without the latter’s killer line.
Hells Bells and Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution have an air of original cliché. If AC/DC hadn’t recorded songs with these tropes, someone would have needed to do so. And it’s just as well AC/DC got there because the band renders them with the necessary conviction.
The title track, which opens side two, is my pick of the album, with Brian Johnson negotiating the scattergun lyrics dexterously. He seems to strain at the vocals a shade more than his predecessor, but, as the ensuing 40-plus years have demonstrated, his voice isn’t out of place.
Elsewhere, things get a bit cringeworthy with the sexual posturing. I’m unsure if Givin’ the Dog a Bone is meant to be couched in innuendo or if it’s straightforwardly about fellatio. And Let Me Put My Love Into You might be okay if it’s tongue in cheek, but if there’s even a scintilla of sincerity…
Getting po-faced about the lyrical content is pointless, though, as the nature of this music is that it is (as Givin’ the Dog a Bone would have it) overblown.
And Back in Black is an album I’ve felt worth streaming occasionally before revisiting it on vinyl.
My copy has a Highway to Hell label on side one, while the one on side two is Back in Black. I remember assuming that one of the supercilious record store staff had slipped the wrong disc into the sleeve. Only the bigger UK record stores displayed their wares in shrink wrapping in the early 1980s — the boutique shops had empty sleeves in the racks that they reunited with the records from behind the counter when you made a purchase. I would have winced at the thought of needing to confront the condescension that passed for customer service by complaining about being given the wrong LP and would have avoided this rather than quibbling over the label when I found the record itself was Back in Black all the way through.
I’m happy that I didn’t force a showdown with a sneering shop assistant by demanding media with the correct labelling. The error makes my copy unique — one in over 30 million.
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