Heartbreak Station

Heartbreak Station is Cinderella’s third studio album, released in 1990 through Mercury Records. It hit #19 in the US and went platinum for selling a million albums there the same year. But while the band’s two previous efforts, Night Songs and Long Cold Winter, had both gone double platinum and reaching triple during the 1990’s, and had each landed in the US top ten while featuring a US top 20 hit, Heartbreak Station achieved none of these things. This is probably because the band abandoned their Def Leppard influence completely, and devoted itself to gritty, boozy rock’n’roll in the vein of Deep Purple, Humble Pie and Mott the Hoople, while Long Cold Winter had retained some of the pop-metal slickness of Night Songs while still diving into Rolling Stones-like territory. This seems to be the reason for its relative commercial disappointment, while at the same time is the reason for its many good reviews, which name it the best of Cinderella’s classic albums (check the allmusic review for example). The album featured two singles, which were “Shelter Me”, hitting #36 in the US, and the title track, which made #44.