“The Hunter” by Dokken

"The Hunter" kicked off the singles from Dokken's Under Lock and Key in 1985, the first one Elektra sent out from the album, and it's the band at full throttle. All four members, Don Dokken, George Lynch, Jeff Pilson and Mick Brown, share the writing credit. Dokken sings lead and plays guitar next to Lynch, Pilson holds down the bass and Brown the drums, and those two stack up the backing vocals.

Neil Kernon and Michael Wagener recorded, produced and mixed it, and it's heavy metal polished to a hard, radio-ready shine. It climbed to number 25 on the US Mainstream Rock chart and hung around there for 9 weeks, following "Just Got Lucky" and giving way to "In My Dreams" in the band's run of singles.

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