Motorheart

Motorheart, the seventh album, came out on Cooking Vinyl on 19 November 2021 (COOKCD805), with Big Nothing / Ultra-Vybe's Japanese edition released worldwide the same day (OTCD-6841). Announced in June for 15 October, it had been moved to 19 November by August, as the official site's posts show. Dan Hawkins produced, engineered and mixed it (Big Nothing). It was made during the pandemic: Dan and Rufus Taylor worked up the songs at Dan's home studio in England and sent them to Justin Hawkins in Switzerland, who added the vocals, the melodies and the guitar solos, as Guitar World described it. Justin told Billboard it was good-time rock'n'roll: he deliberately left off a full-blown ballad and overt social commentary, and did not want it to be another Easter Is Cancelled. On guitar he went for a Slash feel, he said, and he called "The Power And The Glory Of Love" a love song locked in the body of an AC/DC song. The title song was introduced as a homage to a devoted sex robot (official site), and of "Jussy's Girl" he said he was aiming somewhere between Def Leppard and Billy Ocean (Blabbermouth). The singles were "Motorheart", "Nobody Can See Me Cry", "Jussy's Girl" and "It's Love, Jim". The album reached number 16 in Britain and number 1 on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart. The Japanese edition adds the deluxe edition's three bonus tracks and the Japan-only "The Age of Darkness". The running order here is the original's as printed.