Lick It Up by Kiss

Lick It Up, Kiss's 11th studio album and their first for Mercury, came out in 1983, and before anyone had heard a note the band dropped the bombshell: they showed up on MTV with their faces bare, the first time the public had seen them without the make-up. After a slide through the early '80s, the gamble paid off. Paul Stanley produced, and the record trades the comic-book theatrics for leaner, meaner hard rock, with Stanley and Gene Simmons out front, Vinnie Vincent's guitar squealing and Eric Carr hammering the drums.

The title track struts on a sleazy, fist-pumping chorus and remains the song rock radio's countdowns return to, with "All Hell's Breakin Loose" snarling behind it. Its videos were all over MTV, it won the band a new generation of fans, and it opened an unmasked era that lasted until 1996. By the end of 1990 it had gone platinum.

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