“Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet

"Ballroom Blitz" began with a near-riot: in January 1973 the Sweet were bottled off the stage of the Grand Hall in Kilmarnock, Scotland, and writers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman turned the night into a song. The band cut it that June at Audio International Studio in London, over a stomping riff and drumbeat that owe more than a little to Bobby Comstock's 1963 "Let's Stomp".

It's glam rock at full tilt, a bar-room brawl with a backbeat and a wink, and it hit hard: number one in Canada, number two in Britain and Australia, number five on the Billboard Hot 100. Americans found it on their edition of Desolation Boulevard, while back home it never landed on a proper Sweet album, only on the hits collections.

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