AMERICA’S LEAST WANTED
America’s Least Wanted is the full-length debut album by rock band Ugly Kid Joe, released in September 1992. The title is a parody of the famous phrase “America’s Most Wanted”. The album was a commercial success, charting three singles on the Mainstream Rock Tracks (“Neighbor”, “Busy Bee” and “Cats in the Cradle”). “Everything About You” peaked at No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart and at No. 9 in the Billboard Hot 100. “Cats in the Cradle” (a 1974 folk rock song by Harry Chapin), also reached made the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number six, earning the album two Top 10 Billboard hit singles. As of 1995, the album has been certified double platinum. (More from Wikipedia)
Ugly Kid Joe, America’s Least Wanted – Allmusic describes Ugly Kid Joe as a “fun-loving hard rock/funk/alt-metal group from Southern California”. To find the fun, you don’t have to go any further than the band name (a takeoff on “Pretty Boy Floyd” – actually a band by that name, Pretty Boy Floyd, not the Depression-era outlaw) or their album names that have similar word play, such as this one plus Menace to Sobriety, Motel California, and Stairway to Hell (with the latter album released just two years ago). This 1992 album is their first and includes their biggest hit song, a faithful but slightly quirky remake of the Harry Chapin classic, “Cats in the Cradle” that made the Top Ten. Of this album, Allmusic says: “Listeners who are too far removed from their adolescence to remember the joys of spitballs and Saturday schools won't find America’s Least Wanted engaging in the least, but it wasn’t designed for them. Ugly Kid Joe rocks for the average high school kid, the one that doesn't think about anything except girls, partying, and metal.” Like many of the CD’s that I got that day, my copy of America’s Least Wanted is missing the jewel-box booklet, so I hadn’t seen the album cover until just now: a cartoon drawing of a spiky-haired kid standing in for the Statue of Liberty, holding a porno magazine called Skin and flipping the bird, with the band’s name rendered in Green Jellö-style dripping letters. Additionally, Ugly Kid Joe had previously released an EP called As Ugly as They Wanna Be (1991) that includes another Top Ten song, “Everything About You” (this song is also included on America’s Least Wanted). The band went into the record books since As Ugly as They Wanna Be became the first short-form album to go multi-platinum.
(December 2015)
