“Madalaine” by Winger

"Madalaine" introduced Winger in 1988 as the first single from their self-titled debut on Atlantic, and it goes back to the band's very beginning. By Kip Winger's account it belongs to the very first batch of songs, four in all, that he and Reb Beach wrote together; it grew out of a fistful of riffs Beach had been carrying around since his younger days, and Winger worked out how to stitch them into shape.

Kip sings lead and plays bass and some keyboard, Beach and Paul Taylor handle the guitars, and Rod Morgenstein pounds the drums. Beau Hill produced and engineered it, arranged it with the band and slipped a small string section in behind the stomp: violins from Hae-Young Ham and Sandra Park, Rebecca Young on viola, Maria Kitsopoulos on cello. It reached 27 on Billboard's mainstream rock chart.

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