“Rock of Ages” by Def Leppard

"Rock of Ages" roars out of Pyromania, Def Leppard's 1983 album, and before a single chord lands you get producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange counting the band in with a string of mock-German gibberish instead of the usual one-two-three-four, a joke from a man of German descent that stuck. The Offspring liked it enough to sample that count-in at the top of their 1998 song "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)".

Lange wrote it with Joe Elliott and Steve Clark, and he produced and mixed it, with Mike Shipley engineering. It's a stadium chant built from steel: Elliott hollering, Clark, Phil Collen and Pete Willis layering guitars, Rick Savage and Rick Allen stomping out the beat, Booker T. Boffin's keyboards glinting behind. It topped the Top Tracks Rock chart and reached 16 on the Hot 100, and Louder later crowned it the greatest hair metal anthem of them all.

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