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Mötley Crüe > Girls, Girls, Girls > Reviews
Mötley Crüe - Girls, Girls, Girls

The Girls Are Back In Toooooown - 65%

Sweetie, September 13th, 2018

Girls Girls Girls has almost no change in formula nor delivery than the album’s predecessor, other than the fact that it’s a little heavier, and is a little blunter. By this point, Motley Crue were rising to their peak success, and while they never matched the brilliance of the first two records, they came very close with the follow up of this. On the other hand, Girls Girls Girls runs into the problem of not being as self-aware as Dr. Feelgood, and there’re a couple tracks that are so obviously filler that I’m not sure how this one made it so big. I mean, come on. “Five Years Dead” has some of the lamest lyrics, almost the same exact chorus structure as the title track, and some of the laziest riffs ever written. Put this and a few others aside, though, you’ve got some fantastic stuff and an overall better output than Theatre Of Pain.

As usual, we’ll start by pointing out the record’s strongest flotation devices, that being the sex induced title track and “Wild Side”, the iconic show opener. Both songs are packed with party vibes, hit the scene huge, and are the biggest reason to this album’s success. Need any more really be said? On the other hand, there are a few select tracks that make this one stand slightly ahead of the previous effort. “Dancing On Glass” is one of the more important ones, as I think this is an extremely underrated track. It has such strong riff work and vocal technique and is quite possibly the heaviest song this disc contains. Following it is another one that has the same delivery methods but is admittedly cheesy as all fuck, that being “Bad Boy Boogie”. These bangers with the acoustic tribute to Sixx’s grandmother “Nona” make for an inconsistent but momentous side A.

Side B is where most of the issues and filler lie, but there is one standout that holds this up, and that is “You’re All I Need”. Considered a ballad by most standards, it’s still a heavy hitter and has some of the strongest emotion, depth, and musicianship the band has ever produced. The solo in this rocks, the combination of pianos and heavily distorted riffs are beautiful, and Vince’s singing is more on par than ever. It’s a shame that the rest of side B is just sub-par decent music with little memorability, but I guess the ending with a fun Elvis cover is noteworthy. If this album were more consistent, less forced sounding, and didn’t have as much filler music that seems just thrown together, it could have been legendary. Still carries a lot of weight. Oh, and it seems like every set of bonus tracks has one that really stands out. The unreleased number “Rodeo” is very much worth your time and has the same energy and vibe as “You’re All I Need”.

Lame, lame, lame - 36%

Brainded Binky, December 31st, 2014

I don't mean to be blunt, but this album, "Girls, Girls, Girls", is one of the most cliched, most ridiculous albums ever made by a glam metal band, the epitome of sleaze. But hey, what did you expect? It's Motley Crue after all! They were the ones responsible for such "musical masterpieces" as "Home Sweet Home" and the cover of "Smokin' in the Boy's Room". Needless to say, I take "Girls, Girls, Girls" with a grain of salt, 'cos the stupid-o-meter is going off the scale.

Well, okay, there might be some improvements from the last album, I mean, the riffs aren't as generic as they were on "Theater of Pain". Granted, they still have that glam rock formula, but "Wild Side" actually has a pretty decent riff. It's got that rockin' feel that is found on "Too Fast for Love" and "Shout at the Devil". If only they hadn't slowed down the tempo during the bridge and made it sound even sleazier than it needed to be. That's pretty much what ruined it for me. Another thing that leads to the song's downfall is the unnecessary "hammer sound" that occurs before each verse. What's the point of that? The song isn't about industrial work, so I see no reason for it to be there! Surprisingly, Vince Neil seems to have improved in his vocals...a little bit. He puts more energy into them, adding a bit of a growl to it, but there's still that nasally sound that escapes his throat that irritates a lot of people, including myself. There's a little less of it, but it's still there, so it does not excuse him from anything.

There's other songs on here that sound a little better, but they fall flat due to either the song's subject matter, or anything else. Take for instance "All In The Name Of", which has a good rock-based riff, but the song's topic, a rebellious fifteen-year-old girl doing rebellious things, makes it an extremely cliched song of Poison-ic proportions. A lot of songs on here are like that. Then there's the songs that are completely silly, like "Sumthin' for Nuthin'". The song sounds exactly like its title, an overdone glam metal piece with a generic riff, even more generic riffs related to city life (something we'd expect from Motley Crue) and the lamest chorus I've ever heard. If there's any song to sum up glam metal as a whole, it would be this one. It's got all of the things that would go into a glam metal song all in one package. That's what a lot of people hate about glam metal, it's just got too many ridiculous songs about (and I know you've heard this before, but) sex, partying, and lots and lots of girls. Is it any wonder that Motley Crue were labeled "posers" during their heyday?

Every song on here is pretty much the same, nothing but songs about life an L.A, and by that, I mean nothing but the above elements that usually go into every glam metal song. What more can you expect from a song entitled "Five Years Dead" or "Bad Boy Boogie"? The latter is just obnoxiously asinine, 'cos it's like the band's rendition of "Smokin' in the Boy's Room", in the sense that it's got a shuffle-like tempo, a rather bluesy rock riff, and of course, a subject matter that's been done to death. It's just an incredibly aggravating song that sounds just as dated as the Brownsville Station cover on the previous album. It would've sounded more tolerable if it were released a decade earlier, but it's made even worse by the production quality that was prevalent in the 80's. As a result, "Bad Boy Boogie" is one of the worst examples to come from "Girls, Girls, Girls". Oh, and don't forget the fact that "Five Years Dead" almost sounds exactly like the title track. That's right, they've got the same tempo, the same melodies that go into the riffs and in the vocal part. They just changed things around a little bit and branded it a new song. It's like what would happen if Quiet Riot put two Slade covers on "Metal Health". It's just ridiculous.

But, like I said, what did you expect? It's Motley Crue! Did you think they'd come up with anything groundbreaking or genius? Probably not. This album, though, is just boring. We've all heard those songs about street life, sex, partying, etc. before, yet they still persisted with it. I'm not gonna lie to ya, it's just one of those albums that if you listen to it, you'd lose half of your brain cells. You'd lose less brain cells if you tried to sit through a Pokemon movie marathon. It's that bad.

Hedonism In Its Prime Time - 78%

Maniac Blasphemer, May 27th, 2014

Sometimes I curse the fact that I was not born to witness the 80s. Surely, many metalheads agree that the period spanning from the 70s up until the early 80s is the golden age of heavy metal music and all of its sub-genres. While I do find good things and bad things in it, what this era had and the current one doesn't is, in my opinion, passion. Motley Crue is, or at least was a band that had this kind of passion in their early days. Many people might label them as sell-outs (and sometimes for good reasons), but the talent was there and they proved it in their 30 years of playing rock music.

Motley Crue debuted with a glam punk influenced album called 'Too Fast For Love' back in 1981 which kinda began this whole glam movement, musical wise. 'Shout At The Devil" was a more mature composition that toned down the punk influences allowing more rock elements in their sound and also being a tiny bit more commercial oriented. Then came 'Theater of Pain' which was a rather inconsistent work with a couple of good songs but with way too many fillers. In 1987, Motley Crue released their fourth full length album with a very cliched title, Girls, Girls, Girls. Their fourth offering has the privilege (and maybe the luck) to be more consistent than its predecessor but not by a large margin. If anything, Girls, Girls, Girls may be labeled as 'the calm before the storm' - meaning that the band will release their best charting and most successful album two years later.

Girls, Girls, Girls tries to revive the feelings and the sound from their debut album. It is obvious all the way from the cover artwork, sound and lyrics, that this album takes a lot of influences from the legacy left behind by the New York Dolls. The focus on this record on the sleaze factor is even more obvious as the sex, drug and rock 'n' roll monicker is basically offered a sort of personality cult. Yes, you just need to watch the video for the title track and you will see what I am talking about. The problem with this record, same like on Theater of Pain, stands with it being inconsistent. You have great rockers on this album, especially in the opening section. You get a song with an infectious riff that is perfect for attracting attention (Wild Side), then you got another one which is played in a pretty similar manner but serves as a fun factor (Girls, Girls, Girls) but afterwards it all goes downhill. The momentum achieved with the first two tracks is quickly lost with 'Dancing on Glass' which tries to prolong the satisfaction while failing in doing so.

Afterwards you get a blues influenced offering (Bad Boy Boogie) but what ruins it is the cliched lyrical theme (which is obvious since Nikki was still dealing with his drug addiction). Only good songs in the middle and ending part of the album are the ballads and the live cover of Elvis Presley's famous song, Jailhouse Rock. Theater of Pain was saved by a ballad and another cover song and the second half of this work is no exception. Nona (written by Nikki for his grandmother that died around that time) and You're All I Need are catchy and emotional ballads that feature good song-writings skills. The cover song was put there probably because the band did not have enough songs to fill the quota but I have to admit that the choice was an inspired one as it is a groovy, catchy tune.

So, here we are at the end of the review. Motley Crue's days of debauchery are long gone but this album stands in their legacy as the pinnacle of their rebellious days. While image wise it did make a heavy impact, if you just calm down from all the hype and closely listen to the entire album from an objective point of view, you will see that half of it is pure filler. Nevertheless, this album stands above Theater of Pain because that one was saved by two songs while this one has half of the album as being a decent to great offering. And those songs are the exact same reason why I can ignore much of the embarrassing moments (my god, the lyrics in some songs) or the lack of song-writing skills in some other moments (All In The Name Of… - I think you know what the last word should be). Motley Crue has better offerings in their discography, no doubt. But this one ain't that horrible that will make you stop playing it. It's just this album was not meant to be their magnum opus. They will achieve it while being sober, but for the 5-6 songs I mentioned (3 of them being often played live) I think it deserves a place on the shelf of every rock/metal fan. This album is also a great choice for a rock party!

Inconsistent, repetitive, but still fun - 65%

The_Blacksmith, March 19th, 2009

This is a fairly sizable drop in quality compared to the previous albums. Some of the songs here are the typical Mötley Crüe awesomeness, but there’s a large amount of filler in here as well that gives the album a lot of difficulty. As always, the album is full of great riffs, even on the weaker tracks. But a good riff isn’t enough to keep the song enjoyable if the rest of it is really weak. Of course, this is the time when the band were totally overboard with addiction, so you can imagine where their priorities were set at the time.

The problem with the poorer songs on this album is that they’re so damn repetitive and sound largely the same. But before we dwell on that, lets look at the good stuff.

The opening song is “Wild Side”, and wow! This totally rules! Killer speed metal riffing going on here, with cool breaks and awesome hard lyrics. Following this is the instantly memorable title track, and this one sort of sets the tone for the style of the rest of the album, but it does it right. Sleazy, bluesy riff work, jam-packed full of hooks and a fun, simple chorus that sticks like glue. This is what they seemed to be aiming for with the entire album, and it’s a great idea. If they’d done it properly, the album would have totally ruled. The other song that follows this formula with success is “All in the Name of…”, which has one of the coolest riffs Mick has ever put out. The song is memorable and stands out amongst the crap, aside from the really silly lyrics which appear to be about Vince having sex with a fifteen year old. “You’re All I Need” is this albums power ballad, and is the 3rd single from the album. It never made it as big as “Home Sweet Home” - namely due to it’s nasty video and brutal lyrics - but I actually prefer it. The lyrics tell a dark tale that flows beautifully with the equally beautiful music. My favourite Mötley ballad, and easily one of the greatest ballads ever written.

The last standout track is the live cover of “Jailhouse Rock”, which is a great metallization of the classic rock n’ roll song.

The rest of the album though, hmmm…As I stated before, these songs are immensely repetitive and samey. “Dancing on Glass”, “Five Years Dead” and the rest all have a cool riff each and a catchy chorus, but that’s it, they’re just repeated throughout the whole song. Mick Mars will put out a nice solo every now and then, but really, the songs simply don’t go anywhere and sound very unfocussed. Even the band themselves say that this was potentially the end of their career, had they failed to put out the singles.

The production is great though, once again at the hands of Tom Werman. This would be the last Crüe album he’d produce, before the band hired Bob Rock instead, and Werman would then go on to produce Poison’s second album (a great album by the way, at least Poison never allowed drugs to come before the quality of their music).

So overall, if you’re a Crüe fan then you must own this anyway. To the more casual listener, try and pick it up cheap. Some great songs to be found, but plenty of filler as well. The remastered version has the awesome ballad “Rodeo” as a bonus track as well, so go for that one. Apparently Mick Mars can barely remember recording this album…Good stuff.

Motley Crues last metal masterpiece - 90%

absurder21, November 2nd, 2008

Motley crue is generally one of the more commonly known 80s metal bands, and this album is what cemented their popularity in the 80s. The problem it’s their last release to have that 80s metal feel their previous three did. After this they released Dr.Feelgood, which, as good as it was, wasn’t metal but just glam rock and balladry, almost reminiscent of poison. None the less, this is still a very solid album that will show you what the drugged up Motley Crue was good at. Rehab sucks.

The guitar work on this album is the same as it always is for Motley Crue, good but not excellent. Mick Mars still doesn’t really show any magnificent soling originality in this and he relies a bit on the trend of the year to get the job done. His riffs on the other hand, are solid and extremely satisfactory, especially his riff for “wild side”.


Tommy has never been an excellent drummer, we all know that, but his drumming fits the songs well and it doesn’t really ruin the songs at all, keeping an interesting rhythm for most of the songs and even being able to survive through Wild Side, their fastest song on the album (for the most part).


Nikki Sixx’s bass is irrelevant blah, blah.
Vince Neil keeps his trademark snare of a voice, this is the last time we hear his hard vocals before going to the constant high pitched moan heard on the albums after this, and so I guess in comparison, they are excellent vocals.


The lyrics are still in the vein of Motley Crue’s older releases. Violence, Drugs, Sex, anger the good ol days right? But there are two ballads on the album whose lyrics kind of clash with the overall feeling and kind of leave you confused. Other then that, the lyrics for the other songs are satisfactory and don’t make you gag with horrid cheesiness a la Poison (this opinion may differ on the song Girls, Girls, Girls).


The production is still fairly raw and sounds like Black metal compared to the overproduction of Dr.Feelgood, but that’s a good thing I think. The overall tone of the album gives you that raw, LA life feel which Motley Crue is supposed to give you every time, but as I mentioned just now, they lost after this album.


While listening to this album, it is like a roller coaster ride that never really gets to the height it starts at. It starts off with four pure metal songs, and then goes into the ballad “Nona”, and after that, it never really gets to the same point of heaviness. "Five years dead" starts off pretty heavy and is metal, but then breaks into some poppy verses and choruses almost killing its metal-ness. After that, “All in the name” is just Glam rock; it isn’t really heavy or anything just really glam rock. Then “Sum thin for nuthin” brings up the heavy up a little bit, but never returns to the pure metal of the first bit of the album. After that, it’s the boring ballad “You’re all I need”, a fairly heavy ballad, but at this point you know that the album isn't going to get anymore metal as it is the last track on the album.


Overall, it is still a pretty solid album with some 80s metal anthems and the like, but you can really start to hear where they started to betray their 80s metal roots and conform to the poppy-glam rock style of the 80s made famous by Poison and Bon Jovi.

Not as bad as one would think... - 81%

PowerMetalGuardian, June 15th, 2004

Motley Crue's Girls, Girls, Girls album remains to this day one of the most underrated Crue albums. There is a simple explanation if you think about it. Motley Crue started to break away from their heavy metal roots and do what most bands were doing in this time period -producing glam albums. The biggest beef people have with this album is that it only has two hits on it. Wild Side and Girls, Girls, Girls; two very awesome respectable Crue songs. There are other album just like this, having only one or two hits, and yet the album still sounds good. Some examples are Poison - Open Up And Say Ah! and Dokken - Back From the Attack. The truth is those two albums, and Girls, Girls, Girls, has a load of good songs, awesome riffs, etc. but they are masked because of the lack of hits.

So what songs are good on this album? Well of course are two hits Wild Side and Girls, Girls, Girls. Other good songs are Dancing On Glass, Five Years Dead (while a good song strangely sounds like Girls, Girls, Girls), All in the Name Of..., and Sumthin' For Nuthin. All these songs have decent guitar parts, proclaimed to have been written Mars while drunk.

Neil's vocal performance is good as usual and he manages some weird high parts at the end of Dancing On Glass that are most excellent. Sixx blends his bass parts well with the music. However there is not much action from Tommy on this album. It's like he just does what he is supposed to, no more, no less. The only really bad song here is Bad Boy Boogie which has a very bad blues style riffs and solos. You're All I Need should be the third "hit" on this album. It is a very underrated Crue ballad. But of course what would a glam metal album be with its soft ballad guitar parts, desperate vocals, and intense guitar solos?

Nona is a pretty weird song, seeing as how it only lasts a minute and some. Supposedly it was written for the movie "Out of Bounds." Another okay song is the live bonus of Jailhouse Rock. It is done really fast, which is pretty cool, but in the end this song wasn't made for an album. Bad production makes it sound like the music was recorded in a high school gymnasium. Die hard Crue fans should respect this album for just about every song that this album has to offer. While the rest of us will just replay Wild Side and Girls, Girls, Girls over and over and over...

Something went wrong. - 41%

Nightcrawler, February 22nd, 2004

Okay, I'm trying to figure out what went wrong here. This album manages to suck majorly, with some of the most hideously boring songs the band ever did put out, even though it sounds pretty much exactly the same as Theatre of Pain or Too Fast For Love, or even Shout At The Devil at some moments.
And I guess that's the problem, they just ran out of ideas. They recycle old songwriting ideas and concepts, that just come off as too damn forced and boring. Dancing On Glass, Five Years Dead, Sumthin' For Nuthin' (worst song title ever? Quite possibly), and so on, this just doesn't cut it.

But it didn't have to suck this badly, cause it's quite obvious that they hadn't lost the songwriting skills. They still had it in them, and they kick the fact right in your face with the first two songs on here. Wild Side and the title track are classic fucking Mötley Crüe, and some of the best shit they ever did. Especially Wild Side, which is easily in their top 5 material, and with a mean, vicious attitude never before seen in the band. Follow that up with one of their catchiest sex songs, Girls, Girls, Girls, and you got one fuckin' killer opening to this album.
But unfortunately, the quality just doesn't remain. These two killer tracks gave the listener false hopes. Instead of continuing to rock, they give us boring, plodding tune that the world would be better off without.
All of the other songs sound like old classic Crue tunes, only it seems they tried to make the songs as perfect as possible, that the rocking energy that was evident on stuff like Take Me To The Top just vanished.

Also, the sex subject is getting really fucking lame here. Bad Boy Boogie, All In The Name Of... and Sumthin' For Nuthin', oh how I loathe those songs. Aside from the fact that they suck extremely much, I can't read the lyrics without cringing. It's really ridiculous- though it would get even worse on the next album...

There is, though, one more worthwhile song on here, the closing ballad You're All I Need, which is a pretty well done emotional ballad. Home Sweet Home, this is not, but it's not On With The Show either. And then the remaster also has the monstrously awesome live cover of Jailhouse Rock, which owns you in every way possible. Everybody in the whole cell block was dancing to the jailhouse rock! Fuck your stupid sex songs, guys. Elvis knew how to rock, take some advice from him. Or at least look at your own first three albums.

No, I'm sorry to say it, but this just doesn't cut it. Mötley Crüe forgot how to rock, sad but true. Well, either that, or they didn't want to- cause they still had it in them. I'm gonna go listen to Wild Side and the title track over and over and pretend that the other songs don't exist.