“Tear You Apart” by She Wants Revenge

"Tear You Apart" was the second single from She Wants Revenge's self-titled 2006 debut, out in America in January and in Britain on July 17, and it's dark, synth-slicked rock made for dance floors with the lights turned low. Justin Warfield sings lead, plays guitar and wrote the words, sharing the music credit with Adam Bravin; Adam 12 handles bass, keyboards and percussion, and the band produced it themselves, with Michael Patterson mixing.

The groove is cold and insistent, a mechanical pulse and a bass line that circles like a shark, while Warfield's deadpan murmur keeps everything simmering just below the boil. It's the sound of a club at closing time, when desire and danger start looking a lot alike.

It reached number 6 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and just scraped the Hot 100 at number 122. Then came a second life: in 2015 it played in "Checking In", the season premiere of American Horror Story: Hotel, at the personal request of Lady Gaga, one of the show's stars. The disbanded group found a new audience and got back together because of it.

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