Song of the Week #38
Its a real strange one when a band who you (and the world) have written off for a long time, end up coming back and surprising you with a big (read: half decent) tune that makes you revisit their back catalogue and show them a small bit of love again.
Buckcherry were a band who I loved in the late 2000s. The American rocker vibes twinned with some memorable riffs made for many hours of enjoyment as a teen plugged into an iPod for approximately 70-80% of his free time. I went and saw them for the first time in July 2009 at the cockpit on the Black Butterfly tour with my non-rocker Dad would you believe, as one of my best mates dropped out last minute because he and his girlfriend had broken up (oh teenage love)! The show was scintillating, the band were so in sync they wouldn’t have dropped a beat if you’d blindfolded them all, it was everything I hoped it would be.
The strange thing about Buckcherry though, is that it all came crashing down with 2010’s All Night Long. The album was extremely lacklustre save a couple of songs; the problem at that point into the 3rd album since reuniting, was that they’d actually spent more time since 2006’s 15 to 2010’s album release consistently writing songs about doing cocaine, longer than any of the band members had ever spent actually using cocaine, go figure.
Whilst I saw them a few more times when they came around on tour, it was around 2013 (presumably for the Confessions tour looking at their back catalogue) that I went to Manchester’s academy 2 to watch the band play, and they’d lost that quintessential ‘it’ factor that enticed me in the first place, and that whetted my appetite for more of their music back in that fateful night at the cockpit. They had turned in a short space of time into less of a laughing stock, just more Dads well into their 40s trying to play the cool young rocker card. I remember realising how out of touch they were with everyone when they put a Facebook post up in 2019 asking if any of their fans who were ‘young, attractive women with a significant social media following’ would like to come to LA and be part of their latest music video. Read the room guys, read the room.
That being said, I always gave the lead single off each album a listen as it was released. A whole lot of mediocrity, let me tell you, that I’ve saved you the trouble of listening. But yet here we are on a Song of the Week talking about Buckcherry - why?
Well, it was the self titled track off 2021’s Hellbound that rejuvenated my faith in the band - its a well-produced, catchy throwback to classic rock of the 70s and 80s. Amazingly though, it isn’t Hellbound that is going to be the Song of the Week at Sinner’s HQ, I wouldn’t do that to you lovely people.
Given that Buckcherry are very much a lesser-known band anyway, I’ll give you something from the back catalogue that might pique your interest, rather than play a modern throwback to what they used to sound like. I very nearly chose a ballad, but decided against having 3 soft SOTWs in a row last minute.
This is the song that they finished on the very first time I saw them live. From 2006’s 15, Onset.