AMG Review of Animal Boy

Eduardo Rivadavia
All Music Guide

With Animal Boy, producer Jean Beauvoir (of Plasmatics infamy) attempted to update the Ramones' sound with the commercial conventions of the day, meaning keyboards and synthesizers. The balls-out title song momentarily simplifies things, but the album nevertheless progresses in hit-and-miss fashion. Of note, the album contains one of the band's most clearly political statements in first single "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg," written about President Ronald Reagan's ill-advised visit to Germany's Bitburg cemetery, the site of many Nazi graves. Interestingly, the song was later retitled "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down" prior to the album's release, after vehement protests from guitarist Johnny Ramone, a fervid conservative.