“Flight of Icarus” by Iron Maiden

"Flight of Icarus" broke an Iron Maiden habit: it was the English metal band's first single written without Steve Harris, credited entirely to Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson, and it came from Piece of Mind, their fourth album, in 1983, with Martin Birch producing. Their eighth single, it was also the first they released in America, where MTV put it into heavy rotation and radio, for once, played along. It became their highest-charting single on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart at No. 8, though Britain was cooler and stopped it at No. 11.

Then it vanished from their shows. Dickinson and Smith played it with Dickinson's solo band during their years away from Maiden in the 1990s, and the band finally brought it back on May 26, 2018, in Tallinn, Estonia, for the first time in 32 years.

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