Eliminator (Collector's Edition)

In ZZ Top’s case, video helped the radio stars. Eliminator continued a band trend of New Wave-influenced exploration; the added pop sheen and a series of witty clips that MTV adored made the Texas threesome household names far beyond the blues-rock faithful. Those synthesizer textures basically updated the music’s grind, with songs like “Got Me Under Pressure” otherwise hardly straying from roadhouse verities. Elsewhere, the likes of “If I Could Only Flag Her Down” and “I Got the 6” (“gimme your nine”) would have been at home on Deguello or Fandango!. And the Top’s outré sense of humor made an ode to “TV Dinners” both part of their lowdown tradition and a righteous brother to Talking Heads’ and Gary Numan’s views of modern living.