“Poison” by Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper came out snarling in July 1989 with "Poison", a single from Trash, his 18th album, on Epic. He wrote it with producer Desmond Child and guitarist John McCurry, and McCurry's riff had a previous life: two years earlier he'd used it on John Waite's "Encircled".

Child gives it the big, glossy pop-metal treatment, all hooks, but Cooper sings it with enough menace to keep the sugar from rotting his teeth. It became one of his biggest American hits, reaching number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, and did even better in Britain, where it went to number two. Billboard later placed it 91st among the most successful songs of 1989, and Ultimate Classic Rock placed it seventh among his best songs.

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