“Love Bites” by Def Leppard

"Love Bites" comes from Def Leppard's 1987 album Hysteria, and it began life as something nobody expected from them: a country ballad that Mutt Lange brought to the band. They didn't recognize themselves in it at first, so they went to work, bolting on power-rock muscle and swooning backing vocals of the sort R&B ballads were using at the time. The title had belonged to a completely different song, which was renamed "I Wanna Be Your Hero" and ended up as a B-side.

The result is a slow-burning power ballad, Joe Elliott aching over Steve Clark and Phil Collen's glistening guitars, Rick Savage's bass and Rick Allen's heavy, patient beat. Released in August 1988 on the wave of "Pour Some Sugar on Me", it spent a week at number one on the Hot 100 that October, the band's only chart-topper there.

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