The Song That Strippers Made Famous
Step inside, walk this way...
Have you ever noticed how FUN songs always come out in the summer?
(The Northern Hemisphere summer, that is...)
Beyonce’s Crazy in Love in 2003.
Katy Perry and Snoop’s California Gurls in 2010.
Anything Lizzo released in 2019.
This summer, it’s Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso.
When I think back to the summers of my youth, I can remember so many songs (and videos) that filled my days — and that I still associate with childhood memories.
And in 1988, this band had the most FUN song of the summer.
Def Leppard.
They came onto my radar in 1988 when they released the song that feels written for an arena (or perhaps the strip club).
Do you know the song I’m referring to?1
But what’s the story behind the song?
I was curious.
In 1987, the members of Def Leppard had been working on their new album, Hysteria, for three years.
It had cost $5 million to produce and been a painful process for all involved.
Making matters worse, drummer Rick Allen had been in a car accident that resulted in his left arm being amputated. He had to re-learn how to play the drums on a customized electronic kit.
“You really would start to think we were cursed,” said frontman Joe Elliott.
They finally finished the album’s last track, Armageddon It.
That’s when Elliott picked up an acoustic guitar during a coffee break and played a hook that caught the attention of their producer, Mutt Lange.
“That’s the best hook I’ve heard in five or 10 years. We should absolutely be doing this song,” Lange said.
The band was not interested.
They were exhausted, and just wanted the album finished.
They feared it would take another six months to add another song to the album.
But it actually only took about 10 days.
The new song was different.
It mixed a country guitar lick, and took inspiration from Run DMC, and the crossover version of Walk This Way they recorded with Aerosmith.
In October 1987, Def Leppard released their new song in the UK, where it reached an unspectacular No.18 on the charts.
“When we released it in Europe, it was ignored,” guitarist Phil Collen said.
The record company decided not to release the song in the US. Instead, they released Women (which reached No.80) followed by Animal and Hysteria.
But the following year, Hysteria sales stalled at three million.
The US record company made a last ditch attempt to claw back some of the album’s huge production costs.
They made a new music video, and released the song that had already failed in Europe...
Pour Some Sugar on Me
The result was nothing short of a phenomenon.
The song reached No.2 in the US and pushed Hysteria to the top of the album chart.
It remains Def Leppard's best-selling album to date, selling 12 million copies in the US and over 20 million copies worldwide.
MTV ranked Pour Some Sugar on Me #1 in its “Top 300 Videos of All Time” in May 1991, and VH1 ranked the song #2 on its “100 Greatest Songs of the ‘80s.”
Pour Some Sugar on Me, the song that was different – and initially rejected – catapulted Def Leppard to new heights.
One more thing…
So what do strippers have to do with this song’s success?
Collen has credited strippers in Florida for the songs popularity — as they called radio stations constantly to request the song.
Apparently the strippers in Canada were also fans.
What’s your favorite song of summer? Let me know in the comments!
In case you missed it…
Get ready for the Olympics with a bit of nostalgia (and inspiration) from this story about the 1992 Lithuanian men’s basketball team.
I wondered how I never heard this story before, but then remembered that it happened in 1992 — before the internet!
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-Beth
I’m hoping you do.
Probably not my absolute favorite, but when Call Me Maybe came out, I loved all the videos with groups lip synching the song - the Harvard baseball team, Missy Franklin and several Olympians, etc. Summer should be FUN and so should the music.
Oh wow. When I worked agency side this used to be my pre-heading-out-to-pitch song 😂 I had no idea about the history but I guess it wasn’t just me who felt that performance kinda energy