The only number one song Def Leppard had in the US
How Def Leppard only scored one number one in the United States is anyone’s guess. For a brief period at the end of the 1980s, the British rockers were arguably the most popular band in the country. With the release of Hysteria in 1987, Def Leppard was simultaneously the highest-selling group and the biggest concert draw throughout the US. However, it had been an arduous journey to get there.
Previous singles like ‘Photograph’ and ‘Rock of Ages’ were hits, but they both just missed out on reaching the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The recording of Hysteria took four years, during which time drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in an automobile accident. Def Leppard was in serious danger of being forgotten by American audiences, and the relative failure of the album’s first American single ‘Women’ was not a good sign.
‘Animal’, the band’s first UK single from the album, was released next, reaching the top 20 on the American pop charts. Still, sales were slow, and Def Leppard needed a major boost in order to recuperate the costs of recording Hysteria.
It was decided that ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ would be the band’s best bet to turn their fortunes around. The move worked, and ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ became the band’s highest charting single up to that point, peaking at number two nearly a full year after Hysteria had originally been released.
Capitalising on that momentum, Def Leppard followed it up with the power ballad ‘Love Bites’. “It was just a standard rock ballad but it had something else going for it,” guitarist Phil Collen remembered. “Lyrically, it kind of painted a picture, and in a song you always want to do that, paint a picture. ‘On a dark desert highway,’ the first line of ‘Hotel California,’ great song, it just paints an image for you straight off the bat and that’s the sign of a really good song. It takes you right there. ‘Love Bites’ did that as well.”
After releasing five previous singles from the album (both ‘Hysteria’ and ‘Armageddon It’ were released as singles before ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ got an official US single release), Def Leppard finally had their first US number one with ‘Love Bites’. The sales of Hysteria exploded thanks to the band’s pop chart success. It would have taken multiple millions of album sales for the band to recoup their losses, but Hysteria wound up going multi-platinum in multiple territories, securing the band’s future in the process.
Check out ‘Love Bites’ down below.
