“Animal” by Def Leppard

"Animal" was the first single from Def Leppard's Hysteria in 1987, and no track on the record gave them more grief. The band had it in the works by early 1984, but neither Jim Steinman nor his successor, Robert John "Mutt" Lange, could get it to sound right for two and a half grinding years. It was the only Hysteria song Rick Allen demoed on a real kit before his car accident, and a later take built on a drum machine stuck so close to that demo that the band feared it was going stale.

The breakthrough came in Paris in July 1985, when Joe Elliott laid down a lead vocal so good that Lange and the band tore up the backing track and rebuilt it around him. The payoff is pure candy-coated hard rock, all stacked harmonies and gleaming guitars from Steve Clark and Phil Collen, and it gave them their first top 10 single back home in Britain, reaching number six.

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