3 Huge 80s Hits That Were Last-Minute Album Additions

Some of the best songs in history were written at the last minute. Here are a few iconic 80s hits that were the last to be put on their respective albums.

“Pour Some Sugar On Me” by Def Leppard

Apparently, when this one was written, Def Leppard already had 11 other songs for their album Hysteria ready to go. This song came about after frontman Joe Elliot started playing a riff in the studio. Had the album’s producer, Mutt Lange, not noticed, we might have never gotten “Pour Some Sugar On Me”.

“I honestly think to this day he thought I was just playing some Stone or Kinks song or something,” Elliot admitted in an interview. “I said, ‘It’s just an idea I had, it doesn’t matter, we’ve got 11 songs on this record, two years into it, I know we’re done,’ and [Mutt] goes, ‘Oh no, we’re not. That’s the best hook I’ve heard in over five years. Play it again.’”

“Dancing In The Dark” by Bruce Springsteen

“Dancing In The Dark” would propel Springsteen’s 1984 album Born in the U.S.A. to success and give him the biggest hit of his career. Ironically, though, this song was the last one to make it onto the project. Springsteen only wrote it because his manager, Jon Landau, thought he needed something single-worthy.

“Jon [Landau] had been bothering me to write a single, which is something he rarely does,” Springsteen explained. “But he did that day. And he wanted something direct. That seemed to be what he was hitting on me for at the time. I was angry. I had written a lot of songs and was kind of fed up with the whole thing. We’d been making the record for a long time and I was bored with the whole situation.”

That night, Springsteen wrote “Dancing In The Dark”.

“Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears For Fears

It’s hard to imagine a world in which “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” isn’t one of the 80s’ defining hits. Ironically, though, it was a last-minute addition to Tears For Fears’ sophomore album, Songs From The Big Chair.

Roland Orzabal, who came up with the song’s riff, was pretty unimpressed with the tune.

“I didn’t really think anything of it, to be honest with you,” he told Guitar Player. “It didn’t have the depth of the other material I’d been working on. But my wife at the time liked it. So I thought, ‘Okay, maybe I’m wrong.’”

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