“The Ripper” by Judas Priest

Glenn Tipton wrote "The Ripper" top to bottom, words and music, for Sad Wings of Destiny, the second Judas Priest album, which Gull Records put out in 1976. It's short, dense and going full tilt, a rocker that crams in part after part and change after change, with Tipton and Kenneth Downing on guitars, Ian Hill on bass, Alan Moore on drums (this was the one Priest album with Moore on every track) and Rob Halford out front.

Jeffrey Calvert and Max West produced it with the band, on the kind of tight budget the Gull days were made of. The album sold poorly at first, but the song outlasted that: it has since become one of the band's live standards.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.