10 Greatest Hard Rock Songs Of The 1980s
2. Photograph - Def Leppard
Hard rock has never been known to be the most accessible of genres. From the sounds of the booming drums to the singers being a bit on the screechy side sometimes, you were probably just as likely to scare away some of the pop fans whenever you turned on Headbangers Ball. Then again, who says that hard rock has to always be dark and foreboding?
After taking the traditional hard rock route with their last album High N Dry, Def Leppard took the gamble for mainstream success with Pyromania, with Photograph as their calling card. From a pure sonic standpoint, this was one of the most fine tuned records of the day, having the same crunch as AC/DC along with the layered sounds of Queen at the exact same time. For a band that was just a scrappy bunch of kids from Sheffield a few years prior, it was shocking to see them suddenly going toe to toe with Michael Jackson's Thriller on the charts.
Beyond just being a great tune, this worked as the gateway drug that could get other people into the genre. Once you got a taste of this, you could dig a little deeper and find the heavier stuff later down the line. Every rock and roll journey has to start somewhere, and if this was your entry point, it's a damn good place to start.