Tracks 2, 11, and 14 from Run With The Pack (1976)

Tracks 4, 10, and 15from Burnin' Sky (1977)

Tracks 7, 13, and 18 from Desolation Angels (1979)

When I think of Bad Company, I think of a favorite old "Kids in the Hall" sketch: "Popular music has been on the wane since 1974, the year of the first Bad Company release." After Foreigner were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, I wrote about how they were part of a wave of '70s and '80s bands, alongside Journey and Bad Company, that dominated classic rock radio playlists for decades without necessarily commanding a lot of respect. For a long time, the Hall of Fame ignored those bands, but now they all seem to be getting in, one by one, along with other radio-friendly middleweights like Peter Frampton, Steve Miller, and the Doobie Brothers. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, although it feels like the HOF is using these artists as filler inductions so that any given year's class isn't too young, too Black, too niche, or too light on guitar bands. My money is on Boston to be the next one. 

I don't think Bad Company is thought of as a 'supergroup' today, because they wound up being bigger than any of the members' previous bands, but that's how they were looked at when members of Free, Mott the Hoople, and King Crimson formed a new band in 1973. They shared a manager, Peter Grant, with the biggest band in the world at the time, Led Zeppelin. And when Led Zeppelin formed its own label Swan Song, Bad Company became one of the label's marquee acts, really the only the only successful one besides Zep. 

Bad Company never threatened to overtake their label bosses -- only their biggest sellers, their first two albums, sold as much as Zep's least popular album -- but they had several platinum albums, a pretty good run. They have a live album called In Concert: Merchants of Cool, which puzzled me a little, because were they ever considered particularly cool, even when they were popular? A lot of Bad Company's album artwork (including all the covers above) were designed by Hipgnosis, though, and those look pretty great. 

"Bad Company," "Shooting Star," "Ready For Love," "Silver, Blue & Gold," and "Rock Steady" were never released as singles and never charted, but all of those are classic rock radio staples I've heard a hundred times, so I didn't consider them for the deep cuts playlist. But "Seagull" is an album track that's among the band's top songs on Spotify, "Live For The Music" appeared on the band's top-selling best-of compilation, 10 From 6, and "Simple Man" and "Deal With The Preacher" are live staples. 

All four original members of Bad Company participated in the songwriting, and I have a hard time really distinguishing any difference in the writing styles of their two most prolific writers, frontman Paul Rodgers and guitarist Mick Ralphs. Drummer Simon Kirke, father of "Girls" actress Jemima Kirke and "Mozart in the Jungle" actress Lola Kirke, is the only person who's been a concistent member of every Bad Company lineup. Kirke co-wrote the song "Bad Company" with Rodgers and has a few solo writing credits on good Bad Company songs including "Weep No More" and "Peace of Mind." His drumming really elevates some of these songs, particularly "Don't Let Me Down." 

A couple years ago I heard "Electricland" on the radio and it was probably the first time my ears perked up for a Bad Company song that hadn't been in steady rotation for my entire life. That song was the only single from Rough Diamond's the band's sixth and final album with Rodgers, and I think they split before doing any sustained touring for that album so most of it was never played live. I kind of like the piano-heavy sound of that record, though, "Untie The Knot" is so good. 

One thing I didn't realize until recently was that Bad Company reunited in the mid-'80s with a new frontman, Brian Howe, who had singing on Ted Nugent's records. And Bad Company actually continued to be pretty successful with him, so I covered that era in the last three tracks on the playlist. The four Bad Company albums with Howe solid a combined 2 million copies and had spun off top 10 rock radio hits. I listened to the band's Howe-era hits and didn't recognize any of them, even "If I Needed Somebody," which is in the band's top streaming songs on Spotify today. I wouldn't surprised if I had heard some of those songs back in the day and either had no idea it was Bad Company, or had no idea that Bad Company had a different singer than they did before. Howe is a pretty generic soulful English rock singer, he doesn't sound exactly like Paul Rodgers but I feel like he's close enough that at least part of the radio-listening audience didn't even register that there was a lineup change. Bad Company had another singer, Robert Hart, for two unsuccessful albums in the '90s, and eventually reunited with Rodgers for tours and a handful of new songs, but never a full-length album.