3 Long Rock Songs From the 1980s That Still Became Massive Hits

Ask any radio programmer, in almost any genre of music, and they’ll say that the best length for a radio hit is under three minutes and 30 seconds. But sometimes, songs are so good, they defy any type of restraint when it comes to length, including the three songs, which were all big hits in the 80s.

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“Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses

Coming in at six minutes and 49 seconds is “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses. It is the final single from their debut record, Appetite For Destruction. Band members Slash, Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan, and Steven Adler wrote “Paradise City”.

A Top 10 hit for Guns N’ Roses when it was released in 1989, the chorus says, “Take me down to the Paradise City / Where the grass is green, and the girls are pretty / Take me home /  Oh, won’t you please take me home? Take me down to the Paradise City”.

“Edge Of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks

When Stevie Nicks released “Edge Of Seventeen”, she was still at the beginning of her solo career. On her freshman Bella Donna album, Nicks wrote “Edge Of Seventeen” by herself.

Out in 1982, Nicks was inspired to write “Edge Of Seventeen” by thinking of the late John Lennon.

“This was written right after John Lennon was assassinated,” Nicks explains to Entertainment Weekly. “That was a very scary and sad moment for all of us in the rock and roll business. It scared us all to death that some idiot could be so deranged that he would wait outside your apartment building, never having known you, and shoot you dead. … And to be shot and killed in front of your apartment, when you had a wife and two kids? That was so unacceptable to all of us in our community. So the white dove was John Lennon, and peace.”

The five-and-a-half-minute song says, “Well, he seemed broken-hearted / Something within him / But the moment / That I first laid / Eyes on him / All alone on the edge of seventeen / Just like the white-winged dove / Sings a song / Sounds like she’s singing / Whoo, baby, whoo, whoo.”

“Edge Of Seventeen” might be long, but it still became her first multi-platinum single.

“I’ll Be There For You” by Bon Jovi

Out in 1989 on Bon Jovi’s fourth studio album, Jersey, is “I’ll Be There For You”. A sweet love song, written by Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, “I’ll Be There For You” clocks in at five minutes and 45 seconds.

Still, it became one of the band’s many No. 1 singles, “I’ll Be There For You” says, “I’ll be there for you, these five words I swear to you / When you breathe, I want to be the air for you, I’ll be there for you / I’d live and I’d die for you, I’d steal the sun from the sky for you / Words can’t say what love can do, I’ll be there for you.”

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