“2 Minutes to Midnight” by Iron Maiden

"2 Minutes to Midnight" was the first shot fired from Powerslave, Iron Maiden's fifth studio album, hitting the shops through EMI in August 1984 as the band's tenth single. Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson wrote it, Martin Birch produced, and it was the first Maiden single to run past five minutes, a record it held until "Infinite Dreams" came along in 1989.

Underneath the headbanging, it's a protest song about the nuclear arms race, and a furious one. It goes after the business of war: the way bloodshed keeps the global economy fat, the rich politicians who profit from it, and the wrecked world left behind, primed for the next war and nastier weapons. Britain answered by sending it to number 11 on the singles chart.

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