“Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar

"Hit Me with Your Best Shot" was the second single from Pat Benatar's second album, Crimes of Passion, the record that became her biggest seller, and it was written by Eddie Schwartz. Keith Olsen produced, and the band plays it like a bar fight with a backbeat: Neil Giraldo on guitar and keyboards, Scott St. Clair Sheets on second guitar, Roger Capps on bass and Myron Grombacher on drums, with Giraldo and Capps chiming in behind Benatar's taunting, fists-up vocal.

It became her first top 10 hit in the US, reaching No. 9 on the Hot 100, went top 10 in Canada, sold over a million copies at home and settled into life as a stadium staple at baseball and soccer games. In 2022 Benatar told USA Today she would stop singing it, in protest of mass shootings in the United States.

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