Thoughts on American singer Pat Benatar?Do we like her?How do we rate her?

She can sing. I get her mixed up with Joan Jett in my head.

We Live for Love is one of my favorites of hers. I also love So Sincere.

She has a nice voice and in the 80s was one of the few female singers "rock" stations would play (as opposed to "pop")

We had Pat. Kids today have....Taylor Swift.

How dare you R4!

You will certainly never be another notch on MY lipstick case!!!

We love Pat.

She apparently has a high vocal range. She has a great voice. You can listen to her today and her voice is still quite clear. I've always like her. She's one of my top 10 all-time faves.

She was trained in opera.

Adored her . Still do . One of my biggest regrets in life is never having seen her in concert. So many great,iconic 80s songs itd be difficult to pick just one .That being said her version of Wuthering Heights might just be my fave.

Gap Playlist is a wealth of knowledge on Pat. I think she’s good but i haven’t bought any of her music since 1989 or so.

She was a pop star who had some hits in the 80s. That's all she was. She was supposedly a sex symbol, but I didn't think she was much too look at, with those pop eyes and huge teeth. And those spandex leotards she always wore! They only emphasized she had no tits and no ass. I never liked her. In interviews she came across as dumb and egotistical.

I've always liked her

R11 please post a selfie. I would love to see what you look like.

Pat was, and is, awesome. "Promises in the Dark" is my favorite, especially when driving somewhere.

Amazing. Watch this video!

I like her, but she has performed the same set list In concert for years. She gives her husband equal billing, which must help his ego.

Sorry video above is of her version of “So Long”

Nothing beats the twirling titties in the "Love is a Battlefield" video.

She kinda lost me with "Hell is for Children"

She seems like she does the state fair/small venue circuit where people usually want to hear the hits. Meanwhile big fans want to hear different songs. Must be hard to please everyone.

[quote] Pat was, and is, awesome. "Promises in the Dark" is my favorite, especially when driving somewhere.

Promises!!’ In theee... 1,2,3,4!!! DDDDarrrk

I remember the video for that one.

I always liked this one

Sex as a Weapon

“Shadows of the Night” is everything to me. 12 year old me with a hairbrush standing before the bathroom mirror. I press play on the cassette recorder (remember those?)... I was HER, Darling!

"Invincible" should be the theme song of anti-Trumpers everywhere.

What’s fair is fair!

Pat wrote in her autobiography that she is a better singer than Liza Minelli

Pat is a classically trained opera singer

Why won't classic rock stations play female singers - I know they do occasionally but it's very rare: Blondie, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, Grace Slick, Chrissie Hynde, Annie Lennox - it pisses me off. They're perfectly happy with James Taylor, John Cougar Mellencamp, Crosby Stills Nash, the fucking Eagles, I mean, those aren't hard rock either but they're on all the time. WTF?

r25 Pat really said that??!😮Ooh meow!

"Pat wrote in her autobiography that she is a better singer than Liza Minelli"

That seems so random to me. They weren't in the same genre - and whoever said Minelli was a standard to measure by? Maybe Streisand, Ronstadt, Cline, Houston - I mean, I can see comparing yourself to somebody who, well, comparable, but Liza's a ratpack Hollywood darling type, who never did rock - or even pop, did she? Just Broadway type crap, loud like mom (and always reminding you of mom...) Did Pat think she should have starred in Cabaret with Joel Grey? I mean WTF?

The Rodney Dangerfield of rock 'n' roll.

People who have dealt with here have said she's a bitch, but concede her husband is a nice guy. She once referred to herself as being "a beautiful woman" in some interview. She always had quite an inflated ego.

r30 A bitch in what kind of way?

Besides the already mentioned Promises in the Dark, I still like Fire and Ice.

That was my first album

98 lbs of shimming fierceness.

" A bitch in what kind of way?"

Rude. Hard to work with. Being bitchy. That's the kind of way.

I can't speak to what she's like as a person, but quite a few of her songs still hold up well, moreso than a lot of her rock peers from that era. "Invincible" is still one of my favorites.

YOU BETTA RUN!

YOU BETTA HIDE!

This was on the early days of MTV more often than....well, than HGTV has Fixer Upper episodes.

Neil Giraldo was hot

Promises In the Dark and Fire and Ice are also my favorites. I've always liked Pat, still listen to her music.

The video for Love Is A Battlefield, featuring 30 year-old Pat running away from home and becoming a prostitute in the big city, is a craptastic 80s masterpiece. Long ago, we had a hilarious thread on it.

Pat is a four-time Grammy Award winner for female rock performance. She has two RIAA-certified multi-platinum albums, five platinum albums, three gold albums, and 15 Billboard Top 40 singles - and yet when she was finally nominated for the rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame this year they failed to vote her in!

Fucking morons!

I liked her empowered persona. She covered John Mellencamp's "I Need A Lover" before he hit the big time. Cheeky to sing from a female perspective. She was a bundle of dynamite.

'Fucking morons!'

Shut up Pat, you pissy little bitch.

She’s no Kim Carnes

Booby shake, booby shake, booby shake, tae bo, tae bo...

Fellow Long Islander. I've met her, she was very nice.

I had a childhood friend whose mother went to high school with Pat where they grew up in Long Island. She said Pat was a music geek and got her voice from her mom who was also trained in opera. Pat was so talented that she was accepted to Julliard but she never went because she was so in love with her boyfriend that she married him right out of high school.

Neil is really hot. I guess it's commendable that she gives him equal billing but I suspect a lot of her choices revolved around her husband. I think her blues album True Love was more his dream than hers. (I do love that album though despite the poor reviews). I remember one of those VH1 Biography shows or something like that where her family got a lot of airtime. In the early 2000s, apparently her daughter opened for her and my God, she was terrible.

She does give me a bitchy vibe. She seems very pissed about a lot of things, especially about her career. She admits to slugging some exec and yet somehow I don't believe it. Seems she likes to mythologize herself. She likes to think of herself as some bad ass rebel. No doubt she has accomplished a lot but I agree with r30, she reeks of an inflated ego. Having said that, she is talented and I guess you can't blame her for developing such an ego.

She always struck me as one of those females who feel like they're nothing without a man. She always seems like one of those who say "you're the man. you're the one in control." In an interview she said her ex-husband resented the fact that she still used his name (she was born Patricia Mae Andrzejewski) even though "I don't belong to him any more." BELONG to him? Despite her tough rock star chick image and songs like "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", she's actually the submissive partner in her relationships with men.

If you had a big-dicked stud like Neil “Spider” Geraldo blowing out your back every night you’d be saying, “you’re the man, you’re the one in control”

That blues album was good, but it derailed her career.

Hell Is For Children was her best song.

R11, Madonna was a pop star. Pat Benatar was a ROCK star. She won the Best Rock Female Vocal 4 years in a row until Tina Turner stole her career. She was fierce and paved the road for female singers. She could crush Alanis and all the whiny Lilith Fair bitches in the palm of her hand. And I don't know what interview you saw, but she's always come across as sweet and soft-spoken.

Pat came across as lowkey.........until her mood shifted, and she became a ball-buster. She earned the right to be one. Her vocals gave her all she needed.

" She was fierce and paved the road for female singers."

"Paved the way for female singers?" In her mind, perhaps. But she paved the way for no one. And her "fierce" act was just that: an act. She was really just another passive female. When I think of "fierce" I think of Janis Joplin, and hers was no act. Actually SHE was the who "paved the way" for female singers. I can't think of any female singer before Janis Joplin who went onstage with no makeup, sweated like a pig, drank whisky during the performance and sang her guts out. Janis Joplin could outsing Pat Benatar anyday, and without the "opera training", too.

Her "You Better Run" video was the second video ever played on MTV after the premiere with "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.

Janis Joplin was way overrated. Her screeching voice was like listening to cats being strangled. And if she was so fierce, she would've gotten through life not strung out on heroin.

Pat Benatar was one of the very few rock chicks in the early 80s, along with Heart. But Heart were in a career lull at the time. The other big female singers (and there weren't a lot of them) were pop, like Diana Ross and Olivia Newton John.

Then Madonna hit and changed everything.

Yes! I still “rock out” to Benatar’s Greatest Hits at least once a year!! Hell is for Children is extremely intense😢

She’s one of the greatest!

Love!

I really like her because I saw an interview with her and the interviewer asked her if she gets tired of singing her old songs and she said, "No," because every song means something different to different people. And even if she is tired of it, the person listening might be remember his departed grandmother, his first love or some other wonderful memory. And it's not about me, it's about my fans.

That is real classy.

She seemed to think she always had to sing like a ballbuster. The Wilson sisters (or Robert Plant for that matter) could have told her that you need to lighten up once in a while.

[R2] That's my favorite Pat Benatar song, too. She also does a great version of Kate Bush's, "Wuthering Heights". Neil Giraldo can still get it.

R11: How old are you? I ask because I remember Pat Benatar in the 80s and she was not considered a Pop star (until she got preganant and went all soft, but that’s later). She was considered a Rock star. Madonna, The Go Gos, Bananarama were Pop. A world of difference.

*pregnant

My favorite of hers is One Love. It wasn't a single but it was a beautiful song from Wide Awake In Dreamland.

IIRC Pat wanted more control of her career and money at a time when the record companies just werent having it,so she was labeled a "bitch" and "difficult" . See Irene Cara . Take En Vogue as another example,they were selling millions of records yet everyone was raking in the bucks but them. Its different now of course,but back then there wasnt anyone they didnt fuck over.

I really only know Pat for the brilliant song 'All fired up' but this thread has certainly given me plenty of other songs to check out.

I was never a fan of her but that video of her where she's playing a teenage runaway (she looks like she's in her thirties) was hilarious. Was that video "Love Is A Battlefield?" Oh well, who gives a fuck. I think that's the one where she's shaking her nonexistent tits, too. It was funny as hell.

"That is real classy."

Such bullshit. She sings the same songs over and over because she knows the people who pay to see her come to hear her sing her same old shit. "Class" has nothing to do with it.

What's wrong with having the same set list for 15+ years?

Pat is laughing all the way to the bank. She has a big beautiful house in Malibu and tons of money.

"She has a big beautiful house in Malibu and tons of money."

So what? She's still a bitch.

Tropico was an interesting album. Even the cheesy Ooh Ooh Song was fun

She took time off in the late 80s to have a kid and her career never recovered.

Loved her rock-heavy work, especially. Fantastically talented band, and a gorgeous husband to boot.

She has a good voice and I think several of songs, but every time I see her or her name, I think of "tombstone teeth," a nickname some DL poster gave her years ago.

*like several of songs, I mean.

She's a B and not in a good way. Not realizing she's a has-been, she raised a ruckus at a food festival when she realized she was not the headliner. Another has-been band was. She refused to play for the 160 people there and then sued for her fee. This was in Ohio a few years ago.

her records were selling less anyway, before the ‘True Love’ album. I’m not sure if her last hit single (the excellent “All Fired Up”) even cracked the Top 20 or even Top 40 although it got a lot of airplay on rock radio. But ‘True Love’ was the end and she never recovered. The double billing of her husband seems odd, he’s still not really a ‘name’ although she demands he be treated as if he were.

Love Pat. The first 4 records and the live album with Love is a Battlefield are all great, and We Belong is a great song that shows she doesn't have to always be doing rock to be effective. See also: her version of Wuthering Heights.

She's also still an incredible live performer. I've seen her 5 times over the years, and she always puts in the effort and sells the songs. Her voice is still powerful, and she has tons of energy. She's not lazy with playing the hits like a lot of bands, and she does pretty much everything you want to hear. But the setlist isn't always entirely the same, she swaps a few deep cuts in and out each year. She also alternates between touring with a full band or doing smaller mostly acoustic shows where it's just her and her husband which makes for a different tone and experience.

There was going to be a musical using her songs/new material based on Romeo and Juliet that had a reading last summer (She talked about it at the show I went to, and played one of the new songs which was good but not great), but I'd guess Covid has that on hold for a while.

Also, at the show I went to last year, she dedicated Hell is For Children to the kids being kept in border camps and briefly spoke against Trump. I was pleasantly surprised both that she wasn't a right-winger and that she would make a direct statement to her older white audience.

R22, same!

I love this woman and I still rock out to her regularly.

All this insiopid gush about her ("I love this woman." Oh, please). I think her agent must be posting on this thread. Or started this thread. Because who the hell thinks about Pat Benatar anymore? She's a has been singer, a relic from the 80s, the most superficial, trivial decade of all time. She's a prime representative of it.

The 80s are beloved and had a lot of great music.

"The 80s are beloved and had a lot of great music."

"Beloved?" I don't know why.. I can't remember much "great music' that was produced back then. Reagan and AIDS; that was the 80s.

^^^SOMEBODY was a friendless cunt in the 80s and I suspect that hasnt changed since.

Plenty of people are thinking about Pat Benatar. And, at least on Datalounge, they are.

People forget Pat was huge in the '80s. She released an album almost every year of the '80s with a few exceptions. Her career cooled in the late '80s but she had major hits throughout. When I became a fan, Love is a Battlefield and We Belong were massive hits. As was Invincible, The Theme from the Legend of Billie Jean.

I think her first album remains her best. Full of sass, attitude, hard rock, I think it's wall-to-wall excellent. Her subsequent albums up until 1993, are very good.

She had a solid catalogt , it still holds up. Fire and Ice is another favorite of mine.

She sings an acoustic version of “We live for love” that is amazing.

Which song from 1985 was better, “Invincible” or Kim Carnes’ “Crazy in the Night!?”

JFC, why does every thread about someone or something in the 80s come back to "Reagan/AIDS/dark times?" Sorry, but it wasn't dark times for everyone. There are some young Gen Xers on here who were blissfully ignorant about that stuff and have great childhood memories watching Saturday Morning cartoons, playing with Transformers and figuring out if they were on Team Debbie or Team Tiffany.

[quote]^^^SOMEBODY was a friendless cunt in the 80s and I suspect that hasnt changed since.

applicable no doubt to R93 too

R85 next time you need to look at a relic or a useless cunt try a mirror

I'm a child of the 80s and it was a great time to grow up. I realize many DLers are older and were already adults in the 80s and it was challenging, but if you were a kid in that decade there are lots of fond memories.

Back on topic: I loved Pat Benatar back then and still listen to her music today.

SOMEBODY is a cretin with an unhealthy fondness for the 80s. I think it must be R88.

"Plenty of people are thinking about Pat Benatar. And, at least on Datalounge, they are."

I seriously doubt that "plenty of people are thinking about Pat Benatar." And if she's mentioned on Datalounge it's only because there are always threads about forgotten celebrities. It's always some "do you remember (fill in the blank)? What do you think about him/her?" She's a relic of the 80s and there are always nitwits on Datalounge with a fixation on the 80s.

R95, you might make more sense if you'd take your tongue out of Pat Benatar's asshole. You are one pathetic cunt.

"I realize many DLers are older and were already adults in the 80s and it was challenging, but if you were a kid in that decade there are lots of fond memories."

Yes, ignorance is bliss, isn't it? Children from that era certainly didn't have any idea what the political situation was like or that AIDS existed. I imagine the 80s must have been seemed so much fun to clueless children and teenagers.

r100 we were children. We were busy being children. The adult world was separate from us.

God, some of you are such miserable, bitter shits.

The 80s was an amazing time to be a kid. So glad I was born when I was.

"God, some of you are such miserable, bitter shits."

You sound like the miserable, bitter shit. I imagine you continually pine for your lost youth, and those halcyon days of the Reagan era. How pathetic.

[quote]Tropico was an interesting album. Even the cheesy Ooh Ooh Song was fun

One of the golden memories from my early teens is when at one hot summer I went through tons of X-Men comics (mostly by Byrne and Claremont i.e. the golden Dark Phoenix era) and was playing Tropico on loop in our tent at our backyard. Diamond Field was the first song on side A of the cassette and it was always exciting to hear it start all over again, followed then by the gorgeous We Belong. I still think of Tropico anytime I see anything X-Men related from Byrne.

Pat was certainly one of the girls in music I loved, alongside the likes of Kate Bush and Kim Wilde. Wide Awake in Dreamland however was the last album I bought from her. I totally loved it, especially Don't Walk Away, but it seems she want all AOR later on and I just didn't care anymore.

r103 we're just having a fun discussion. No need to be a bitter thing projecting all over it.

"Invincible" was the theme song to the craptastic "The Legend Of Billie Jean." That movie was always on cable and my friends in the neighborhood and I knew every line from that movie.

Wide Awake in Dreamland is actually quite underrated. All Fired Up was her last Top 20 hit but the whole album never quite got its due. "One Love" Is gorgeous (a tribute to Bob Marley), "Don't Walk Away", "Let's Stay Together", "Lift 'em on Up" - all great songs.

I saw her in the summer of 1981 at the outset of her Precious Time tour! My best friend and I wanted to see her, so for his fourteenth birthday, his parents drove us three hours to Saint Louis. We got all dressed up and ate at the fanciest restaurant I'd ever been to (five courses!) - and then went to our first major rock concert - wearing suits and clip-on ties. It is an evening I will treasure forever.

And, yes, it happened in the eighties. At the dawn of AIDS, amidst a depth of homophobia that seems almost mythical almost forty years later.

The false dichotomy of viewing or remembering the eighties as either good or bad is simplistic and denies the real experience of joy even in the middle of sadness and confusion. It isn't looking at the past through rose-colored glasses; it's the ability to recognize wonder and happiness even in darkness. If the dark is all you see, okay, but don't insist that that's all there was for everyone. If someone else still appreciates and thinks about an entertainer from four decades ago, give them that. It won't hurt you.

You can't enforce bitterness. Even on Datalounge.

Her YouTube channel is called “Benatar Geraldo”. Silly. Bless her heart for sharing credit, he wrote a lot of the songs as I recall.

She's achieved more than any other American woman without an upper lip ever has.

This song was EVERYTHING to me when I was 14.

[quote]until Tina Turner stole her career

JFC

R109 Her husband wrote a fair number of Pat's songs, both with her and by himself/with other band members, and co-produced most of the records. I do think it's odd that she gives him billing like that and she emphasizes him so much. I wonder if sharing the credit is something she really wants to do, or if she does it to keep him happy and not feeling underappreciated or like she's the boss/only important part of the band.

They do appear to have a pretty loving relationship that isn't all business, judging from the way they are during shows, and have been together for 40+ years so if her giving him some extra credit and billing keeps their marriage happy, I don't blame her for doing it. It's just funny to do it decades into your career and long after her hit-making days were done.

Pat had the look that every high school girl copied at the time. (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) More than that, she had talent - great voice.

Is she part Chinese?

What R112?

If we were to accuse Tina Turner of "stealing" anything, it would be that Tina's team was the one that use to create content for, among others, Olivia Newton-John.

Anyway.

It *IS* surprising that Pat's profile isn't higher. I would say she's similar to a number of other artists from that time - Blondie, the Pretenders, etc. She had a really solid run of albums and singles.

I liked a lot of it. I wasn't a megafan but she had several catchy songs.

There was something about the rock sound and her classical training that maybe sounded great then and perhaps isn't as timeless? She was too mainstream to be a Kate Bush type and too much of a fuckin' LADY to be rolling around on the floor with her cooch hangin' out.

It’s amazing how she had so many hits, and then just disappeared.

R118 Yes. That is the unusual part.

And she took time off for a kid, sure, but seems to have focused primarily on old material when she tours or performs.

I think her problem was the lack of focus, at least later on. She wasn't hungry enough to fight for her place in the sun right when she needed to in the late 80s. She also wasn't that fresh at that point anymore. Madonna and others were young, Pat was some old rock chick from the 70s who'd gone pop and AOR.

Sex as a Weapon was a feminist song which criticised how women were using sex to sell music. She came off as a bit preachy and we all know how well that kind of activism is received in the pop world.

R120 very true. It may have been timing, because the quality was still there, for sure.

She definitely stopped aiming for super-stardom once she had a kid. She also had a bunch of issues with her label at the time and didn't want to write/record, so that's how you get the shitty record Seven the Hard Way followed by her taking 3 years off. She talks about it in this interview.

Once you have a flop and take significant time off, as a aging female artist, you're almost never going to be able to make a comeback. (Cher and Tina being the only exceptions) Plus the material after Tropico just isn't that good.

R122 I loved that CD - Seven the Hard Way

why does the Kim Carnes hater troll have to dump into every thread about music now? We get it, you don’t remember “Crazy In The Night” or “Invisible Hands” and we understand you don’t think she was worthy of attending “We Are The World” and yes, her ‘solo’ was two syllables long. We all understand this and we’ve moved on to more interesting topics.

She didn't really disappear as r122 points out.

Wide Awake in Dreamland was her last album to spawn any hits.

Her blues album True Love was not well received, although I really like it, especially the production by her husband.

Her next album, Gravity's Rainbow, had some good songs but didn't get much attention. It was her last album for Chrysalis. Then she really kind of gave it up and became a nostalgia act.

Gravity's Rainbow came out in '93 and Pat Benatar was way out of the loop with Nirvana and Pearl Jam etc. at their peak. Lots of 80s artists had their careers basically be over in the early 90s as sounds changed and younger artists came in.

Her career faded because people lost interest in her. She was an eighties product and the eighties couldn't last forever, thank God.

Tell me about it.

With her Wide Awake In Dreamland album, she should have gone for the pop-rock sound that Cher and Michael Bolton were doing and having hits with at the time instead of doing hard rock which was going out by that point. I also think it would have done her some good to enlist outside producers at that point to get some new ideas instead of just her husband as always.

r129 Geniune question .Can you please describe and explain the difference to me between hard rock and soft rock or pop rock?

^ Not r129, but I seem to remember distinctions in that era related to airplay and which stations would play which acts.

Pop stations would probably play both hard rock and soft rock, so long as the song were released as a single.

Hard Rock might be Billy Squier's The Stroke. Soft Rock might be Air Supply's All Out of Love.

Hard rock might include Fleetwood Mac on its very soft end and AC/DC on its heavy metal end.

Soft rock might include Fleetwood Mac on one pole and more Adult Contemporary-ish fare like Christopher Cross on the other.

That's in eighties parlance. In 2020, we'd probably state it was a false binary and most acts are more fluid.

r131 Thank you very much indeed 👍

[quote]Which song from 1985 was better, “Invincible” or Kim Carnes’ “Crazy in the Night!?”

Gonna have to go with the first, as I've never even heard of the second song.

She had/has a great voice, which is more than you can say about most of those "other" 80's divas.

Thank you R122 for that article!

I thought "gravity's rainbow" was okay.

But I loved 1997's "Innamorata"

I used her last album 2003's "GO" as a frisbee-awful

My thoughts are her plastic surgery freak daughter married a sort of hot closet case.

I like Pat a lot.

The "incredible range", "trained opera singer" accolades are bit overblown simply because all the songs I love by her don't seem to require incredible range or opera training. People seem to say these things to make her more of a "true artist." I just like the pop-rock songs whether artful or not.

Both her and Joan Jett look like those nieces that are always trying to borrow money.

R138 You mean the ones who are also drug addicted side hookers, and everyone knows it?

Holly Knight said Benatar was the only one who wrote her a thank you note for writing her a hit song.

wood rat

I meant that Knight wrote many hits for different artists, and PB was the only one of them to ever thank her.

I always liked her. I saw her when she opened for Cher in 2014. She was over sixty, and she and her husband Neil Giraldo were FANTASTIC.

For some reason tonight I got the earworm for an '80s song called "Le Bel Age" but I couldn't remember who sang it. Turns out it was Pat, and though it never was a hit, it really holds up.

It sounds like it could have been the theme song for a slick, sexy R-rated 80s movie.

Now I want to look into Pat's other noncharting singles ("Le Bel Age" charted briefly, but you get the idea).

Loved her in High School-yeah I’m old-love her now! Rated X is my favourite, followed by We Live For Love and Heartbreaker.

She’s a personality Enjoying popularity For making movies Rated...X Posing for a magazine Pictures in a limousine Someone simulating...sex.

C’mon that’s gold!

OMG Pat is iconic:

We Belong Fire and Ice Shadows of the Night All Fired Up Invincible Love is a Battlefield

So many great songs. Love her!

Love her catalogue. In 2006, her first three albums were reissued and remastered on CD, but they stopped. I wish they had continued with Get Nervous and Tropico (I'm sure she would have balked at Seven the Hard Way or maybe she's warmed to it since).

I've always liked "Sometimes the Good Guys Finish First" from the Secret of My Success soundtrack. It's a lot poppier for Benatar but it's cute.

Reba don't have no upper lip neither