Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 12, 2023

If you're anything like I am (and you might not want to admit it even if you are), your assessment of Alice Cooper was fundamentally altered when he started talking about his unabashed and unapologetic love of Burt Bacharach. Cooper's persona and onstage antics were simply not that interesting to me as a teen, but once I read an interview with him where he extolled the virtues of the Bacharach catalog, I decided he might be worth checking out more seriously, and I am pretty sure the album I chose for that "field research" was Billion Dollar Babies. This was one of the biggest hits of Cooper's long career, reaching Number One on the album charts and producing several charting singles. If you didn't already know about Cooper's penchants for a certain amount of (pretend?) mayhem at his performances, you might be a little shocked at the disconnect between that extremism and an album that is often surprisingly melodic and straightforward, despite a few patently odd screams and yelps Cooper emits. There's a rather potent mainstream pop-rock sensibility in at least some of the tunes (albeit with often provocative lyrics), and as odd as it may sound, several of the songs, like Elected, have a certain Who-esque quality to them (and the very title of Generation Landslide may itself evoke The Who).

The track list for this album is:

1. Hello Hooray
2. Raped and Freezin'
3. Elected
4. Billion Dollar Babies
5. Unfinished Sweet
6. No More Mr. Nice Guy
7. Generation Landside
8. Sick Things
9. Mary Ann
10. I Love the Dead

Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

While there is video content here, like most hi-res audio Blu-rays, it's simply a menu, but kind of interestingly this disc has been authored differently than (to cite one example) Jefferson Starship: Red Octopus, in that you can't use the color buttons on your remote to toggle between the audio codecs, though you can use the Audio button on your remote to achieve toggling. The disc defaults to the Quadio mix. I've heard from several regular readers of my long running hi-res audio Blu-ray reviews that they'd actually prefer (repeated) screenshots of the menu rather than photos of the band, etc., on reviews, so you get seven screenshots of the menu here.

Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies offers DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options, and I'm assuming anyone interested in this release is going to want to listen to the quadrophonic version, so the bulk of my comments will focus on that. The stereo option is perfectly fine, and decently widely imaged, but comparing it to the quadrophonic version will instantly reveal a much more vibrant high end, to the point that the stereo version can almost sound somewhat "muffled" in the higher frequencies by comparison. There is some verbiage in the insert booklet that mimics similar information in other 4.0 audio Blu-rays about how to utilize bass management, but I'd say whatever choice your particular system offers, don't expect a surplus of low end emanating from the subwoofer (per design), which is not to suggest that there's any real lack in either the lower midrange or actual lowest frequencies. The quadrophonic version offers clear multichannel engagement and perhaps most commendably separation, so that, for example, you can hear Alice emanating from the front channels and then the rear channels in the opening eight bars or so of Hello Hooray, and later in Billion Dollar Babies, the intro clearly offers drums in the front channels and guitars in the rear channels, for a really nicely immersive listening experience. Fidelity is top notch throughout.

Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No on disc supplements are offered, and in fact not even any of the bonus tracks on the 2005 CD reissue are offered here, much like the older Universal Music Group hi-res audio offerings would omit any alternate tracks. An insert booklet is included.

Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Billion Dollar Babies finds Cooper and bandmates in fine form, maybe just a little "punk"-ish at times, but more often than not actually rather lyrical and melodic, if also unrepentantly gonzo and high energy. Rhino provides another Quadio release with really impressive immersion and fidelity. Recommended.