Eye II Eye
| Eye II Eye | ||||
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| Scorpions studio album | ||||
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Publication |
March 22, 1999 |
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| Label (s) | EastWest Records | |||
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Format (s) |
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Title (number) |
14, 15 (Japanese version) |
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running time |
62 min 49 s, 66 min 51 s (Japanese version) |
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| occupation |
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Peter Wolf |
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Studio (s) |
Little America Studios, Austria |
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Eye II Eye is the fourteenth studio album by the German hard rock band Scorpions and was released in spring 1999. Due to an extreme change in style and a new, more electro-poppy direction, this album was received extremely critically by both critics and fans. Of all the band's albums, this is generally considered to be the musically weakest. It was also the first studio album with James Kottak on drums, who also wrote the English verses of the band's only German-language song to date, “You are so dirty”.
production
After a long phase of the great success albums such as Love At First Sting , Blackout or the song Wind of Change , the Scorpions were confronted from the mid-1990s with the situation that the sales of their albums were steadily declining, and so they were faced with the question: “Quit or try something completely new?” You got together with the Austro-American producer Peter Wolf , the composer of the soundtrack for Top Gun , who gave the band a new sound and look . On the album, the Scorpions experiment with drum loops and other electronic gadgets, for example.
Album cover
What was special about the cover was that on the front only the three original members Rudolf Schenker , Matthias Jabs and Klaus Meine were shown and not the entire band, and Klaus Meine, for example, showed himself without his cap, which has become a trademark . The photos inside the booklet also show the musicians in a new, more elegant look.
Style, sale, criticism
For the first time, the album does not contain 9 to 11 tracks, as is usual with the band, but 14 pieces of music. In addition to hard, clearly more groovy songs than usual, there are also some ballads. It is noticeable that Meine sings much lower on some songs and offers a larger vocal range than usual. The songwriting has also changed significantly and is more personal; so the title track is about the death of his father.
The album received mixed reviews and was described by many fans as the Scorpions' worst album. Matthias Jabs himself once called it “the best mistake we could make” in an interview. The following studio albums Unbreakable and Humanity - Hour I corresponded much more to the usual sound of the band.
The album reached number 6 in the German album charts. It has sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide.
Track list
- Mysterious - 5:28
- To Be No. 1 - 3:57
- Obsession - 4:09
- 10 Light Years Away - 3:52
- Mind Like a Tree - 5:34
- Eye to Eye - 5:04
- What U Give U Get Back - 5:02
- Skywriter - 4:55
- Yellow Butterfly - 5:44
- Freshly Squeezed - 3:58
- Priscilla - 3:17
- You're so dirty (and yet so beautiful) - 3:55
- Aleyah - 4:19
- A Moment in a Million Years - 3:38
Bonus track Japan
- You and I (Butcher Radio Remix) - 4:02
Single releases
The title To Be No. 1 . Further singles followed 10 Light Years Away , Eye to Eye , Mysterious and Aleya .
Other song versions
The song Start Me Up , which appeared in 1999 as the B-side of the single 10 Light Years Away , is a completely English version of the song You are so dirty (and yet so beautiful), which is mainly interpreted in German . The song A Moment in a Million Years was reinterpreted for the music video in a new version, at the end of which Kottak started playing drums. This version has not yet been released on any of the group's official phonograms.