Lap of Luxury by Cheap Trick

Lap of Luxury, Cheap Trick's tenth studio album, came out on Epic on April 12, 1988, and it's the sound of the Rockford, Illinois power-pop lifers clawing their way back after a lean stretch earlier in the decade. Richie Zito produced, and the whole thing gleams with late-'80s radio polish, the band's crunch buffed until it shines.

It worked. The power ballad "The Flame" went all the way to number one in the US, the only time the band ever topped the chart there, and a cover of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and "Ghost Town" kept the run going. The album reached 16 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum, and among their studio records only Dream Police has sold better. Underneath the sheen, that Elvis cover still has the cheeky swagger that made them worth loving in the first place.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.