“The Price” by Twisted Sister

"The Price" is the power ballad on Stay Hungry, Twisted Sister's third album, out on Atlantic in May 1984, and the moment where Dee Snider lets the snarl drop. He wrote it in early 1983 in England, where the band was making You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll: four months away from his wife and son had him homesick, and when he picked up the studio phone and told Ricky, Jay Jay French's sister-in-law, how miserable he was, she said that was the price he had to pay. He went off and started writing.

Tom Werman produced it and arranged it with the band, Geoff Workman recorded and mixed, and French, Eddie Ojeda, Mark Mendoza and A.J. Pero stack the backing vocals behind Snider's lead. It was the album's third and final single, and it never cracked the Hot 100, stalling on the Bubbling Under chart.

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