“Wasted Years” by Iron Maiden

"Wasted Years" was Iron Maiden's opening shot from Somewhere in Time in 1986, and the first of their singles written by Adrian Smith alone; he sings the backing vocals too. It's a song about homesickness and feeling cut off, shaped by the grind of a previous tour that had run close to a year and by the personal troubles Smith and his bandmates were carrying at the time.

The irony: Smith wrote it on a guitar synthesiser, yet it's the one track on Somewhere in Time without one. Martin Birch produced. The sleeve shows the view through mascot Eddie's eyes as he pilots a time machine, his face glimpsed only in a screen's reflection; artist Derek Riggs said the band wanted his new cyborg guise hidden until the album landed weeks later. It reached 18 in the UK.

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