Special Forces by .38 Special

Special Forces, .38 Special's fifth album, came out on A&M in 1982, and it's the Jacksonville band scraping the swamp mud off their Southern rock and aiming square at the charts. Don Barnes, who started the band with Donnie Van Zant back in 1974, produced it, and both of them sing over a wall of guitars from Barnes, Van Zant and Jeff Carlisi, with Larry Junstrom on bass and two drummers, Steve Brookins and Jack Grondin, pounding in tandem.

Their secret weapon was Survivor's Jim Peterik, who co-wrote three of the four singles that charted, including "Caught Up in You", a gleaming, heart-on-sleeve rocker that became their first top-ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The album reached number 10, the highest any of their studio records got in the States, and they took it on the road as the Special Forces Tour.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.