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Charted: April 23, 1983


Rating: 4.100 (average of 5 ratings)


Genre: classic blues-based rock


Quotable: --


Album Tracks:

  1. Gimme All Your Lovin’
  2. Got Me Under Pressure
  3. Sharp Dressed Man
  4. I Need You Tonight
  5. I Got the Six
  6. Legs
  7. Thug
  8. TV Dinners
  9. Dirty Dog
  10. If I Could Only Flag Her Down
  11. Bad Girl


Sales:

sales in U.S. only 10 million
sales in U.K. only - estimated 1.2 million
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated 17.5 million


Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart 9
peak on U.K. album chart 3


Singles/Hit Songs:

  • Gimme All Your Lovin’ (4/2/83) #37 US, #10 UK, #2 AR
  • Got Me Under Pressure (4/16/83) #18 AR
  • Sharp Dressed Man (7/9/83) #56 US, #22 UK, #8 AR
  • TV Dinners (12/10/83) #67 UK, #38 AR
  • Legs (4/14/83) #8 US, #16 UK, #3 AR


Awards:

Rated one of the top 1000 albums of all time by Dave’s Music Database. Click to learn more. One of the Top 100 All-Time World’s Best-Selling Albums


Eliminator
ZZ Top
Review:
“ZZ Top had reached the top of the charts before, but that didn’t make their sudden popularity in 1983 any more predictable. It wasn't that they were just popular – they were hip, for God’s sake, since they were one of the only AOR favorites to figure out to harness the stylish, synthesized grooves of new wave, and then figure out how to sell it on MTV” (Erlewine).

“Of course, it helped that they had songs that deserved to be hits. With Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp Dressed Man, and Legs, they had their greatest set of singles since the heady days of Tres Hombres, and the songs that surrounded them weren’t bad either – they would have been singles on El Loco, as a matter of fact” (Erlewine).

“The songs alone would have made Eliminator one of ZZ Top’s three greatest albums, but their embrace of synths and sequencers made it a blockbuster hit, since it was the sound of the times. Years later, the sound of the times winds up sounding a bit stiff. It’s still an excellent ZZ Top album, one of their best, yet it sounds like a mechanized ZZ Top thanks to the unflaggingly accurate grooves. Then again, that’s part of the album’s charm – this is new wave blues-rock, glossed up for the video, looking as good as the omnipresent convertible on the cover and sounding as irresistible as Reaganomics. Not the sort the old-school fans or blues-rock purists will love, but ZZ Top never sounded as much like a band of its time as they did here” (Erlewine).


Review Source(s):


Last updated December 25, 2008.