Billy Squier’s First US Top 40 Hit Was Misunderstood

The arena rock boom of the late 70s and early 80s came riding in on a wave of one-named bands. Journey, Foreigner, Kiss, Kansas, Styx, Heart, Speedwagon. Okay, we cheated on the last one, but you get the idea. Billy Squier competed and thrived in the midst of all that in the arena rock genre, despite the fact that he was going at it as a solo artist. Most of the world thought his first hit single was winking at sexual matters. But Squier wrote in reference to the road he traveled to finally reach chart success.

Videos by American Songwriter

Squier Power

Billy Squier enjoyed a steady stretch of hit singles in the early part of the 80s. And even when he wasn’t hitting the Top 40 of the pop charts, songs like “Lonely Is The Night” and “My Kinda Lover” were all over rock radio.

His career was already more than a decade old when that kind of commercial success finally arrived. In the meantime, he formed a number of bands that didn’t really go anywhere. It looked like he might be headed for a breakthrough when his mid-70s band Piper earned some renown. But they, too, struggled to achieve much more than regional recognition.

Finally, Squier decided he’d try his luck as a solo artist. After all, he’d long been writing the material for his various bands. His 1980 debut album, The Tale Of The Tape, earned a little bit of national airplay. The next time out, he’d do much better, spurred on by the success of his first-ever US Top 40 hit.

An Early MTV Star

Squier had initially sought out Brian May of Queen to produce his sophomore album. May’s commitments wouldn’t allow that, but he did turn Squier on to Reinhold Mack, who had recently produced Queen’s massive hit album The Game. Squier and Mack conjured a big rock sound that suited the songwriter’s flashy tracks.

Squier also benefited from the fact that he debuted the album right about the same time that MTV first hit the airwaves in 1981. Needing video content, the channel dutifully trotted out Squier’s performance videos from the album Don’t Say No. That included the first single, entitled “The Stroke”.

Upon hearing “The Stroke”, it’s natural to think of it as an innuendo-laced track. With lines like “Don’t let your conscience fail you / Just do the stroke,” the strutting rhythm, the glam power chords, and the falsetto chants of “stroke”, what else could it be? Well, it turns out it was Billy Squier’s way of commenting on the compromises one needs to make to hit big in the world of music.

A Music Industry Lament

A deeper dive into the lyrics of “The Stroke” reveals that Squier meant the title to reference the ego-stroking that labels perpetrate on up-and-coming artists. Problems arise when they fail to follow through on the promises they make. “When you find you’ve bled me, slip on by,” Squier sneers.

Maybe those subtleties got lost a bit in the song’s bombastic tone. Nonetheless, “The Stroke” served its purpose in introducing Squier to the wider world. The song peaked at No. 17 in 1981. It would end up being the second-highest charter of his career.

Ironically, his biggest hit was the 1984 single “Rock Me Tonite”, which, due to its somewhat ill-advised video, is often cited as the reason that Squier’s commercial prospects tapered off. In any case, “The Stroke”, bold and mostly misunderstood, certainly launched his hitmaking days with a splash.

Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images