KISS at 50: The band’s 25 most remarkable moments

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.

1. Alive! (1975)

Appearing at the end of 1975, Alive! crystalized the appeal of KISS, cherry-picking the best songs from their first few albums and giving them sinewy renditions that easily eclipsed the frequently stilted original studio versions. Here, KISS sounded as if they couldn’t be contained on a stage: they were larger than life, happily offering their rock & roll thrills with lurid theatricality—a combination that was simultaneously dangerous and silly, a blend that became their enduring signature.