“Rocket” by Def Leppard

"Rocket" comes off Def Leppard's 1987 album Hysteria, and it started with a cassette: Joe Elliott heard a friend's tape of "Burundi Black" by Burundi Steiphenson Black, the same record that had rubbed off on Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow, borrowed it, built a rhythm loop from it and stacked guitar chords on top as a rough sketch. Mutt Lange and the band took the idea and rebuilt it in a higher key, and it very nearly ended up an instrumental with only a short chorus.

Elliott sings lead, Steve Clark and Phil Collen play guitar, Rick Savage bass and Rick Allen drums, with Lange producing and Nigel Green and Mike Shipley mixing. It's a thundering, tribal glam-metal stomp. Hysteria had already spun off six singles when this one arrived in January 1989 as the last of the bunch. It reached the top 15 in the US and the UK, and it was the last Leppard single to come out while Clark was alive; he died in 1991.

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