3 of the Best Forgotten Classic Rock Songs of the 80s

Classic rock hit its peak in the 80s, with bands including The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and Led Zeppelin delighting fans with iconic tunes.

With so much music to choose from, it’d be impossible to include every great song on every single playlist. As such, exceptional songs often fall by the wayside, as is the case with the three tracks below.

“All About You” by The Rolling Stones (1980)

The emotional ballad, “All About You”, closes out The Rolling Stones’ 80s classic rock album Emotional Rescue. The track, which Keith Richards sings, is thought by many fans to be about the guitarist’s feud with his bandmate, Mick Jagger.

However, in a 2019 interview with MOJO, Richards said he didn’t intend the song to have that meaning, though those feelings could have slipped in subconsciously, given the state of his and Jagger’s friendship at the time.

“It was a song of love, discarded love. I never really thought about it in terms of how it was going to be interpreted,” Richards said. “I’m just writing another film noir love song. I know that when I was singing ‘All About You’, I was certainly not thinking about Mick.”

“But relationships in the band being the way they were at the time, these feelings are transferable,” he added. “And once it was pointed out to me, I said, ‘Yeah! Maybe I do mean that!’ We are not in control of our unconscious.”

“F.I.N.E” by Aerosmith (1989)

Written by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry for Aerosmith’s late 80s classic rock album Pump, “F.I.N.E.” is a hidden gem in the band’s catalogue. With a title that stands for F**ked Up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional, it’s no surprise the song is a fan favorite.

Perry once told Baltimore Positive that the song “basically started on this guitar that I have that has a kind of weird tuning.” For the lyrics, he took some “stream of consciousness stuff” and combined it with a chorus that was borne out of a writing session with Desmond Child.

“He didn’t even know we used it until we called him up,” Perry said of Child. “[We] said, ‘Hey, by the way, Desmond, you know that chorus we had for blah, blah, blah? Well, now it’s the chorus for ‘F.I.N.E.’”

“Wearing and Tearing” by Led Zeppelin (1982)

The final track on Led Zeppelin’s 1982 album Coda, “Wearing and Tearing”, is a standout song. They wrote and recorded the song years before. However, it was left off their 1978 album, In Through the Out Door.

As for why the song didn’t make the cut for its first intended album, Jimmy Page told Classic Rock that “the album was so much lighter, it wouldn’t have fit.” 

“‘Wearing And Tearing’ was ‘One, two, three, four, charge.’ My goodness! It was like an assault,” he added. “It wasn’t in character with something like ‘All My Love’.”

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