“Heartbreaker” by Pat Benatar

Pat Benatar's debut, In the Heat of the Night, came out on Chrysalis in 1979, and "Heartbreaker" was the song that kicked the door down. Geoff Gill and Cliff Wade wrote it, and Jenny Darren had already cut it in 1978, but Benatar swapped out the Britishisms that would have baffled American ears and turned it into a street fight. Neil Giraldo is all over it on electric and slide guitar and keyboards, Scott St. Clair Sheets doubles the guitar attack, Roger Capps plays bass and Glen Alexander Hamilton pounds the drums, while Mike Chapman and Pete Coleman produced. Benatar's voice slices clean through the lot.

After the first single missed the Hot 100 entirely, this one crept up to number 23 and hung around for four and a half months, a sleeper that became her breakthrough. VH1 later ranked it 72nd among the best hard rock songs ever.

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