Hotel California by The Eagles

Hotel California, the Eagles' fifth album, landed on Asylum on December 8, 1976, and it's a slick, sun-bleached record with something sour running underneath. Bill Szymczyk produced it with the band at Criteria and the Record Plant between March and October 1976, and the lineup had shifted: Joe Walsh came in on guitar for founding member Bernie Leadon, and it would be the last go-round for founding bassist and singer Randy Meisner.

There's real bite in the guitars, and "Life in the Fast Lane" snarls like a sports car with a bad attitude. The title track is the slow, spooky centerpiece, all shimmer and menace, while "New Kid in Town" is the soft-focus ballad for the other end of the night. Even the sleeve plays along: a David Alexander photograph of the Beverly Hills Hotel, glamour with a chill on it.

It went to the top of the Billboard 200 and sent both the title track and "New Kid in Town" to number one on the Hot 100, with "Life in the Fast Lane" stopping at 11. At the 20th Grammys the title track took Record of the Year and "New Kid in Town" won Best Arrangement for Voices, though Album of the Year went to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. It has since been certified 28 times platinum in the US and sold over 42 million worldwide, trailing only the band's own Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975). A 40th anniversary edition followed in November 2017, and the band played it front to back on its Hotel California 2020 Tour.

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