“I Wanna Be Somebody” by W.A.S.P.

"I Wanna Be Somebody" was the first single off W.A.S.P.'s self-titled 1984 debut on Capitol, and Blackie Lawless lifted the title from the tube: on an episode of Barney Miller, Detective Ron Harris blurts out that he wants to be somebody, and Lawless thought it was a scream. He wrote the words and music, sings it, plays the bass and co-produced it with Mike Varney, while Chris Holmes and Randy Piper split the guitars and Tony Richards handles the drums. Duane Baron engineered with Steve Fontano and did the mix.

It's traditional heavy metal made for bellowing along, and it has hung around: VH1 later ranked it 84 on its list of the 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs.

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