"Rock You Like a Hurricane" by Scorpions

Song#:  1841
Date:  03/24/1984
Debut:  83
Peak:  25
Weeks:  16
Genre:  Hard Rock



Pop Bits:  The Scorpions grabbed their first US hit with the #1 Rock track "No One Like You" (#65 Pop). It sent their album Blackout to #10 and set them up well for their next effort. Love at First Sting would end up being the band's biggest LP in the US.  It would reach #6 and go triple platinum mainly on the strength of this first single. The song would be a hit at Rock, going to #5, and would break them into the Pop Top 30. It was fueled by a wildly popular video on MTV that made them hard rock stars.

ReduxReview:  I remember this video quite well. It seemed like it played on MTV a couple of times an hour back in the day. The video was pretty great with scantily clad women, aliens, and that cage where the walls rocked back and forth. It looked awesome and fit the video to a tee. This song had just enough underlying pop power to put it in the same league as Def Leppard's hits and it did just about as well. I think this should have gone a bit higher on the chart, but hard rock was still just beginning to break through at Pop, so the #25 peak was pretty darn good. It's still one of the best hard rock songs from the decade.

ReduxRating:  9/10

Trivia:  Over the course of eight albums, the Scorpions became know for their controversial covers. Featuring some nudity and/or sexual innuendo, their LPs would often be banned by certain retailers and "clean" covers would have to be issued. They even won a Playboy magazine award for best album cover for their 1979 LP Lovedrive. Initially, they thought the cover for Love at First Sting would make it through just fine. The label pre-tested the cover with reps from larger retail chains and they had no issues. However, after it got released, Wal-Mart filed a complaint about the cover, which depicted a partially nude woman in an embrace with a leather-clad guy who is giving her a tattoo on her thigh. In response, the label issued a new cover for certain retailers that just featured a photo of the band.

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