Happy Anniversary: ZZ Top, DEGUELLO

38 years ago this month, ZZ Top released their sixth studio album, and we didn’t have to love it like we did, but we did…and we thank them.

Produced by Bill Ham, who’d also twiddled the knobs for all of the band’s previous albums, DEGÜELLO was ZZ Top’s first album for Warner Brothers, the label which would prove to be their home for many more years to come. It’s hard to say that the trio actively changed their sound to embrace the opportunities provided to them by being on one of the biggest record labels in the world – indeed, as Ultimate Classic Rock put it, Degüello might have made their sound a touch more radio ready, but it also found a way to retain all of the boogie-woogie salaciousness, the glinty-eyed humor and the country-fried blues that had defined ZZ Top's sound through a career-defining five-album run beginning in 1971” – but they certainly did find themselves receiving plenty of success as a result of being part of a label with a substantial budget for publicity.

DEGÜELLO features a number of classic ZZ Top tracks, but the two most obvious singles in the mix are the Isaac Hayes / David Porter cover “I Thank You,” which opens the album, and “Cheap Sunglasses,” which remains a staple of album rock radio even now. Both songs made the Billboard Hot 100, but the album was the bigger deal in the long run: looking back at the band’s discography, it’s the earliest album in ZZ Top’s discography to have gone platinum.