“Diamonds and Rust” by Judas Priest

Judas Priest reached for a folk-rock song on Sin After Sin, their 1977 album, and plugged it straight into the wall. "Diamonds and Rust" belongs to Joan Baez, who wrote it in November 1974 about a phone call out of nowhere from an old lover that sent her back a decade to a shabby Greenwich Village hotel; she has said the song is about Bob Dylan.

Priest keep her words and wire them up: Kenneth Downing and Glenn Tipton both play electric guitar, Ian Hill plays bass and Rob Halford sings lead. Simon Phillips sat in on drums as a guest, Mark Dodson engineered, and Roger Glover produced it with the band, which is how a wistful memory about a lost love ended up with its sleeves ripped off.

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