“Sister Christian” by Night Ranger

Night Ranger's drummer, Kelly Keagy, wrote "Sister Christian" for his own sister and sang it himself, and when it came out in March 1984, pulled from the Midnight Madness album of the year before, it turned a hard-rock band into a top-five act. It's the power ballad in its purest form: a soft keyboard hush that slowly gathers steam until Brad Gillis and Jeff Watson's guitars come roaring in and Keagy's voice goes for the rafters.

It climbed to number five on the Billboard Hot 100, stayed on the chart for 24 weeks, went all the way to the top in Canada and remains the band's biggest hit. Hollywood never let it go, either: Boogie Nights, Superstar, the 2009 Friday the 13th and Air have all borrowed it, and VH1 later placed it at number 32 among the greatest songs of the '80s.

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