Whitesnake: The Poetry and the Pornography

While I was eating lunch today it occurred to me why Whitesnake was brilliant. I was listening to "Is This Love." It's a love song, unsurprisingly. In fact, most of their songs are overt love songs, with titles like "Love Ain't No Stranger," "Hungry for Love," "Love Don't Mean a Thing," "Looking for Love," and so on and so forth. So you'd thing such a sappy approach to song-writing would instantly alienate legions of metal-loving males, right?

Not really--just when you start to get pissed off at the sappy overtures oozing from your speakers, the band cranks out a gnarly guitar solo and you're into it again. Or they name a song "Slide it In." Or they make a music video for said love song featuring Tawny Kitaen dry-humping a '68 Camaro or something, and you think "Hey, maybe these guys are the retarded metal badasses I want them to be." I assume this feeling is opposite for many women-that the romantic aspect draws them in, and there's enough to tide them through the heavy riffs.

My theory is that they were able to be everything to everyone, masterfully toeing the line between two disparate audiences.


David Coverdale's perm is worth more than your life, worm.