Def Leppard

Released: March 14, 1980

Songwriter: Joe Elliott Pete Willis Richard Savage Steve Clark

Producer: Tom Allom

[Chorus]
When the night time unfolds and the memories that you hold
Bring a light to your eyes though you know it's disguise
When the night turns to day you turn around and say
Magic mirror please tell is this heaven or hell?
Answer to the master

[Verse]
Can you look to the sky? Can you live through your lie?
Of the thoughts you can't trace which time can't erase
To a face on the wall do you often recall
What you said on the night when the new full moon was rising?
Answer to the master

[Chorus]

In 1977, Rick Savage, Tony Kenning, and Pete Willis were students at a secondary school in Sheffield, England. They had a band called Atomic Mass. Lead singer Joe Elliott joined later that year, and suggested a new band name. Within 10 years, that name, Def Leppard, became one of the most recognised in English rock music. To date, they have released more than 40 singles.

Def Leppard was a definitive part of the new wave of British heavy metal bands in the late 1970s. Their first three albums had tremendous momentum, each outselling the one before. Then, after the release of Pyromania in 1983, drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car accident. The band stuck by him through his recovery and retraining.

When Def Leppard came back, they came back hard. Their fourth album, 1987’s Hysteria, was a hard rock masterpiece that took the world by storm. By then the music video had matured as a film style, and Hysteria’s singles and videos had enough pop, sex, colour, and glam to put it over the top. Hysteria was one of the biggest-selling albums of the 1980s.

more tracks from the album

On Through the Night

From the album

On Through the Night (1980)

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On Through the Night