Interview/Album Review: Alexx Michael of Shameless – “So Good, You Should”

With an eclectic array of song choices, Shameless are back with their first ever covers album. From Abba to Tiffany and Green Day, Shameless cover it all on their new album “So Good, You Should”. 

Opening the album with a play on Van Halen’s Eruption, called Erection played by L.A. Guns founding member Tracii Guns, the guitar track sets the energetic and fun tone of the album. Guns’ playing swiftly moves into a cover of The Temptations “Get Ready”, which he is also featured on. Adding their own spin to the track, the band take the classic 60s tune and turn it into an 80s influenced hard rocker. 

Next up are two original tracks that are featured on the album, “Shout It Out” and the title track “So Good, You Should”; both tracks showing different sides to the band. “Shout It Out”, sung by Charlotte Tybalt, is an anthemic 80s influenced tune while “So Good, You Should” takes more of a 90s hard rock ballad approach. 

Continuing on the cover tunes, “I Think We’re Alone Now” by Tiffany (originally sung by Tommy James and The Shondells), “Hiding From Love” by Bryan Adams and “Does Your Mother Know” by Abba all being stand out tracks. Although all the songs on the album are very different, Shameless transformed them into their own, creating an 80s hair metal sounding album with a lot of flare. 

Closing out with a bonus track, an original titled “Live Your Dream” that has a high energy tone with pop-rock vocals, ends the album on a high note. The album is high energy from start to finish, only slowing down in the middle for a piano ballad cover of Green Day’s “Stay The Night”. Each track is vastly different, however Shameless makes them collectively work seamlessly together, serving up 47 straight minutes of fun.

Interview with the band’s bassist Alexx Michael...

Rockin’ Interviews – How are you?

Alexx – Thanks a lot. I’m doing very well and just working on the final steps of the new Blue Ruin record which I’m also involved with.

Rockin’ Interviews – First off, congrats on the new album! I was wondering what the recording process was like for this record.

Alexx – Thanks a lot. Very glad you like it. The recordings were a little bit of a challenge because of the covid chaos. We recorded pretty much in different places all over the planet from New Zealand, Germany, Denmark and the states but in the end it was a lot of fun and very productive.

Rockin’ Interviews – Being your first covers album, what was the process behind choosing which songs you and the band wanted to cover?

Alexx – I had the idea for a few years now. I didn’t wanna do a covers record with the typical tracks from other hard rock bands from the past. I just didn’t see a point in doing that so I picked songs that I always loved but had not that much to do with hard rock. This way we were able to give them our own Shameless twist. It doesn’t make sense for me to do an exact copy of a song. I wanna give people a different view and what can be done with some of those songs. We had so many ones so maybe we later do a second one haha.

Rockin’ Interviews – Each song has its own “Shameless” flare to it, which track was the most fun to record?

Alexx – We had so much fun to record all the songs. The one that stands out the most for me is the version we did of the Green Day song “Stay the Night“. Charlotte came into the studio and nailed it the first time. But also our versions of Love Is Blind and Eastbound and Down stand out to me. I never understood why Love is blind was never ever on a kiss record. Gene Simmons liked it so much that he made a post on twitter about it.

Rockin’ Interviews – The album also includes three original tracks (Shout It Out, So Good, You Should and Live Your Dream), where did the inspiration for those come from?

Alexx – Shout it out came really fast together. I had the music and the chorus and Charlotte came up with the verses. The idea for Live Your Dream came when I finished my 500 page DeLorean book in early 2021. Most books don’t have a soundtrack so I thought it would be cool to record at least one song for it. Anna Monteith and Steevi Jaimz from Tigertailz wrote the title track together with me. I came up with the original idea a few years ago for Cherie Currie to use.

Rockin’ Interviews – Both Tracii Guns and Bruce Kulick are featured on the album, what was it like working with them and was there any conscious decisions made beforehand on what tracks you wanted them to play on?

Alexx – Bruce and Tracii are dear friends for many years and both played on a lot of the other Shameless records in the past. It was pretty obvious for me who should play which leads since they both have a very unique sound and approach.
Both are just incredible guys and always very helpful. Also doing the video for Love Is Blind with Bruce Kulick was a lot of fun.

Rockin’ Interviews – You formed the band in 1989, if you could give that version of yourself some advice, what would it be?

Alexx – Haha probably just do what you believe in and in the end everything will work out. And most important never stop living in the past. It’s a very unhealthy way to just look at things you did in the past. There are so many things that I m. Able to do now that weren’t possible 10 or 20 years ago.

Rockin’ Interviews – What would your dream tour lineup look like?

Alexx – Pretty much the lineup we had on the last few shows with Charlotte, Dennis, BC and Tod. Those shows were so much fun and all sounded incredible. Let’s keep fingers crossed for more shows later this year and next year.

Rockin’ Interviews – You can only listen to three albums for the rest of your life, what albums are you choosing and why?

Rockin’ Interviews – What can we expect from Shameless in the future?

Alexx – We wanna do more shows and for sure release another record in 2024 with original material. It’s just too much fun to stop. Then later maybe do a second part of “So Good”.

Rockin’ Interviews – Is there anything else you would like to add?

Alexx – I wanna thank everyone for the incredible love and support we got so far for the new record. Also how cool and open fans are to the fact that we also have a girl now in the band besides our guys.
For all information about Shameless, my book and Blue Ruin, just go to www.alexxmichael.com and everything is listed.