“Breakdown Dead Ahead” by Boz Scaggs

"Breakdown Dead Ahead" led off the singles from Middle Man, Boz Scaggs's 1980 album on Columbia, and it's slick, tightly wound rock built by a crack crew. Scaggs wrote the music with David Foster, who plays keyboards on it, and wrote the words himself, and Bill Schnee produced and engineered.

Check the credits: Steve Lukather on guitar and taking the solo, Ray Parker Jr. also on guitar, Don Grolnick on piano, David Hungate on bass, Rick Marotta on drums and Lenny Castro on percussion, with Paulette Brown, Venetta Fields and Bili Thedford singing backup behind Scaggs. It climbed to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and did even better in Canada, where it sat at number eight for two weeks.

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