Hydra (Toto album)

Hydra
Studio album by
Toto
ReleasedOctober 26, 1979[1]
RecordedSummer 1979[2]
StudioSunset Sound and Reggie Fisher Recording Studio (Los Angeles, CA)
Genre
Length41:23
LabelColumbia
Producer
Toto chronology
Toto
(1978) 		Hydra
(1979) 		Turn Back
(1981)
Singles from Hydra
  1. "99"
    Released: December 3, 1979[3]
  2. "St George and the Dragon"
    Released: January 4, 1980 (UK)[4]
  3. "All Us Boys"
    Released: March 24, 1980[5]

Hydra is the second studio album by American rock band Toto, released in 1979.[6] It reached No. 37 on the Billboard Pop Albums.[7] While most of the album's singles failed to make any impact in the charts, "99", a song inspired by the 1971 science fiction movie THX 1138,[8] reached No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.[9]

In 2013, Toto's guitarist Steve Lukather said of the album:

You get successful with something, it’s always the whole thing where you don’t want to repeat it. So we tried something a little different with Hydra, and it sold well, although it might have been a little bit rushed for us. And here's some irony for you -- Rolling Stone beat up on the first album, and then when they reviewed Hydra, the opening line of the review is something like, "It doesn’t have the magic of the first album." We're immediately pissing ourselves on the floor with laughter. Who are these cats? Do they think we have amnesia? We were just following our muses, man. We were following our own rules and we didn't want to listen to anybody.[10]

  1. ^ "Music Week" (PDF). p. 52.
  2. ^ Lukather, Steve (2019). The Gospel according to Luke (1st ed.). Post Hill Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-64293-285-0.
  3. ^ "Toto singles".
  4. ^ Strong, Martin Charles (1995). The Great Rock Discography. p. 838. ISBN 9780862415419.
  5. ^ "Toto singles".
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference dbmj was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference amg3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference hst was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Toto Chart History, Billboard.com. Retrieved July 24, 2011.
  10. ^ Giles, Jeff (October 18, 2015). "Interview: Steve Lukather Recounts 35 Years of Toto History". Ultimate Classic Rock. Retrieved April 19, 2019.