I was out and about at one of my favorite local record stores and came across this old 45 Single from Kiss. It was for the song “Tears Are Falling” off their 1985 album ‘Asylum.  By 1985, Kiss was  fully ensconced into the 80’s Hair Metal scene.  Starting with their previous album, ‘Animalize’, the band’s sound shifted from the heavier albums like ‘Creatures of the Night’ and ‘Lick It Up’, to more of the Glam Rock sound to keep up with the music of the time.  That meant power ballads.  “Tears Are Falling” fit that mold quite nicely.

“Tears Are Falling” was released as a single in 1985 and made it to #20 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks, just not technically not a Top 40 hit since it only reached #51 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The song did have better success on MTV where it was in frequent rotation on the station.

The song was written by Paul Stanley and one of the few times we ever get a true Stanley Only song.  The next we got was not until his solo album in 2006.  That bit of tidbit surprised me, but the internet can’t be wrong…can it??  The song was recorded at the legendary Electric Lady Studios which is Jimi Hendrix’s old studio and produced by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.  Interesting enough, Gene didn’t play bass on the song, it was played by Paul.

The song is pure pop!  It has a nice drum beat supplied by the late, great Eric Carr; it has some fancy guitar work by Bruce Kulick, but it is not a heavy song.  It is a little cheesy ballad with its overly catchy chorus which is quite repetitive.  It is not Kiss at their best as they pandered too much for the music at the time.  The 80’s Non Make-Up era is a tough time for the band and this is a prime example of why.

I mean it isn’t a horrible song.  It has it’s moments, but it is not one of the songs I put on repeat and listen to again and again (with the exception of for this post). It is a nice edition to my ever growing Kiss Collection though.

The B-Side of the single was “Any Way You Slice It”. This was a Gene Simmons led song and brings the rock back to the single.  This song was written by Gene and Howard Rice.  It was a fun song and one of the better songs on the album.  Bruce just kills it on the guitar solo as usual. Bruce came on during the ‘Animalize’ tour and replaced Mark St. John and he was a well suited guitarist for this era of the band.  Next to Ace, he is my favorite guitarist they have had.

Here are the lyrics to “Tears Are Falling”….

“Tears Are Falling”