Dada

Alice Cooper had left Beverly Hills and was gazing into TV and vodka bottles at his Arizona home (where a Salvador Dali portrait of the singer hung above the couch) when he decided to make Dada, his final Warner Brothers album. The label had given up on Cooper by then, and the 1982 album tanked. But Dada is Cooper’s most underappreciated, and strangest, album. Here he reunites with hit producer Bob Ezrin (Billion Dollar Babies, Killer) and guitarist/songwriter sidekick Dick Wagner (“Only Women Bleed,” “You and Me”). The trio hadn’t worked in a studio together since 1977’s Lace and Whiskey. Programmed drums and digital strings contemporize things, and Ezrin’s arrangements are a gas with classical riffs and creepy rock overtures that heartily uphold Cooper’s opposing themes. “I Love America” satirizes obtuse Yankee patriotism and predates America’s obsession with hillbilly culture by years, while “Pass the Gun Around” is an alcoholic’s dark double entendre. The pop-wondrous “Dyslexia” would’ve been a hit had anybody cared about Cooper in the early '80s—his Herculean comeback was still a few years ahead.