Concept
The album's goal, set out by Lange, was to be a hard rock version of Michael Jackson's Thriller, in that every track was a potential hit single. Songs were therefore written with this concept in mind, disappointing heavy metal fans who clamored for a straight sequel to Pyromania. One song, "Love Bites", was already mostly written in the vein of a country ballad by Mutt Lange when he brought it to the band's attention.
While Pyromania contained traces of Def Leppard's original traditional heavy metal sound found on their first album, Hysteria removed them in favour of the latest sonic technology available at the time (best displayed on "Rocket", "Love Bites", "Excitable", and "Gods of War"). As with Pyromania, every song was recorded by every member in the studio separately instead of the whole band. The multiple vocal harmonies were enhanced by Lange's techniques, even pitching background vocals on all tracks. Guitar parts were now focused more on emphasising melody than hard rock's more basic and cliched riffs. The band used the Rockman amplifier, developed by guitarist Tom Scholz from the rock band Boston, to record the album.
In addition, all of the album's drum sounds were samples recorded by Lange and the engineers, then played from the Fairlight CMI. In a 1999 interview with Mix Magazine, engineer Mike Shipley noted, "'Pyromania' was done the same way, on cheesy 8-bit Fairlight technology where we had to figure out how to record everything at half speed into the Fairlight to make it sound like it had some tone to it, and we'd be stacking up a bunch of snares and bass drums." Shipley also noted that the drum sounds were dealt with last because each song's structure could change so radically, and because of technical difficulties.
This unique approach sometimes led to painstaking lengths of time in the recording studio. The smash single, "Pour Some Sugar on Me", was the last song written but was quickly finished within two weeks. In sharp contrast, the final version of "Animal" took almost a full three years to be developed but was not as successful as other singles despite reaching #19 on the Billboard 100.
This was a successful formula that Lange would later repeat with his now ex-wife Shania Twain in country music with the albums The Woman in Me and Come on Over.
Read more about this topic: Hysteria (Def Leppard album)
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