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By Stephen Thomas Erlewine / AV CLUB / YAHOO
Fifty years ago this month, KISS arrived on the scene with their eponymous debut album, kicking off a career that would see the band become as well known for their kabuki face paint and outlandish outfits as they would be for their hit songs and their flashy live shows. Of course, KISS can’t be seen as a conventional rock band. Sure, they’ve sold millions of albums, reaching the Billboard Top Ten several times in their long career, but reducing KISS to their discography underestimates their influence: they were the first multimedia rock band, sensing the potential of Saturday morning television, comic books, and variety shows—pop culture territories that most other rockers vigorously avoided.
To get a sense of KISS’s impact, you don’t need a list of their best songs or albums: you need a list of their best moments, a combination of music, media, and marketing that made the band indelible. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley—who led KISS through all its incarnations until the group’s farewell concert last year—were notoriously savvy businessmen, keeping the KISS brand alive throughout the 21st century. Although KISS has made many appearances—they happily accepted seemingly any animated show that came their way, popping up on not one but two Scooby-Doo specials—this list generally concentrates on material from their ’70s rise and ’80s fall, when the band could be seen mixing it up with Hollywood legends and battling bad guys in the pages of a comic book.
25. Avatars (2023)
At the close of the group’s (allegedly) final concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City last year, KISS unveiled their next chapter. As Paul Stanley proclaimed over the PA, “The end of this road is the beginning of another road. We’re not going anywhere! You’ll see us in all different things, all the time. See you in your dreams!” The stage revealed digital avatars playing “God Gave Rock and Roll To You II,” signaling that even though Stanley and Simmons may finally be too old for the road, they’ve found a way to keep the party going long after they’ve retired … and possibly after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.
24. MTV Unplugged (1996)
Aware that KISS needed a strong hook for their 1996 appearance on MTV Unplugged, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley drafted Peter Criss and Ace Frehley to reunite for a handful of songs in the midst of a set that also featured then-current guitarist Bruce Kulick and drummer Eric Singer. Acoustic sets aren’t normally associated with KISS, but the original chemistry was so evident—and so celebrated—that the original lineup of Simmons, Stanley, Criss, and Frehley headed out on the road later that year, launching their tour at Detroit’s Tiger Stadium.
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