“Back in Black” by AC/DC

"Back in Black" is the title track of AC/DC's 1980 album on Atlantic, and it's the sound of a band that refused to lie down. Bon Scott, the singer who gave them their leer, died suddenly that February, and instead of a dirge the survivors wrote him a send-off that struts. Angus and Malcolm Young cooked it up with Brian Johnson, the man now handed the microphone, and it opens on the riff the song is famous for: a clipped, chugging figure with gaps big enough to park a truck in.

Mutt Lange produced and Tony Platt engineered, and the result is all muscle and no fat. Phil Rudd's drums sit dead center and never rush, Cliff Williams thumps along underneath, Malcolm's rhythm guitar works like a piston while Angus sprays licks over the top, and Johnson shrieks like a man who knows exactly whose boots he's filling and means to fill them anyway.

Released in America as the album's second single, it climbed only as high as 37 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1981, which undersells it badly: it has long since been counted among the best rock songs ever cut, and Hollywood can't stop borrowing it, from Iron Man to Spider-Man: Far from Home.

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