The first time I spoke with Night Ranger bassist and singer Jack Blades was nearly ten years ago. In that decade we have spoken many times. Our most recent conversation came as the band is about to release their “Best Of” album on Friday August 28, 2026. You can see Jack’s energy as soon as the conversation starts.
This new collection is remixed and remastered. That brought us right into discussing how their “Midnight Madness” album was written and recorded in about two weeks. Their debut album featured a video for “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me.” The accompanying video for the song was actually a friend’s student project. With all that rushing and at times small budgets to work with, I asked if that made them happy to remix and remaster the tunes. Jack’s answer to that was “Let’s give those those wonderful songs the the advantage of of 2026. Whatever, what the bass sounds like now and the drums sound like and the guitars whomping and the vocals and everything. And let’s create this whole thing. Let’s remix this stuff and let’s master this stuff up and really get it to where we really like it. And that’s what we did.”
The album isn’t just that material from the early days and their classic hits Like “Sister Christian” “(You Can Still) Rock in America” and “When You Close Your Eyes.” Jack also commented that the band thought “But let’s put on our favorite songs from the last twenty years that we recorded, because we haven’t stopped recording and making records. And so we did that.”
Also included on the album are two tracks captured live. The Christmas staple “Feliz Navidad” and a fresh take on their tune “Wasted Time.” Jack lifted his phone when we discussed it and said “We threw on a new song called ”Wasted Time" which we all do way too much time wasted with these."
I think Jack summed up what this album is all about when he told me “It’s like we have fun with this record. So we’re releasing a record that we really enjoyed having a good time with, and that’s what this is all about.”
