Friday, May 29: Dio, "Here's to You"
R.I.P. Ronald James “Dio” Padavona (1942-2010)
Strange Highways was a dark, heavy and difficult album, which made “Here’s to You” with its hollering and cheering both feel like a welcome respite from the borderline oppressive heft and also a little awkward. Presumably it was meant as another Dio anthem along the lines of “Stand Up and Shout” and “We Rock”, and there was something of a hook in Tracy G’s riffing as well as the pre-chorus. But Ronnie’s growling had the same belligerence that made “Jesus, Mary & the Holy Ghost” and “Evilution” total monsters and this iteration of Dio was all about beatdowns, so “Here’s to You” felt a bit stuffy and claustrophobic even as the lyrics offered a rallying cry. Ronnie was aiming for something very deliberate on Strange Highways and for the most part he achieved his goal of crafting a more modern metal record more rooted in the real world, but that created a weird dichotomy on “Here’s to You” that he couldn’t fully reconcile.
