If you’ve ever wondered who helped KISS improbably score with a disco hit, “I Was Made For Lovin’ You,” aided Aerosmith in turning their career around with “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” and “Angel,” sparked Cher’s late ‘80s comeback, or wrote two of the songs responsible for launching Bon Jovi into superstardom, it’s actually just one person who achieved all of this. Desmond Child had only moderate success with his own band, Desmond Child & Rouge, in the late ‘70s, notching a Billboard Hot 100 hit with “Our Love Is Insane.” However, he went on to write or co-write hits for numerous artists, from the ‘80s right through to the present.
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While Child’s collaborations with KISS, Aerosmith, Cher, and Bon Jovi are among his best-known, he has worked with a surprisingly eclectic group of artists. He has written or co-written more songs that have been stuck in your head for decades than likely any of us realize. Here is just a smattering of Child’s collaborations you probably didn’t know he wrote—some of which you may never have imagined would ever have happened.
1. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, “I Hate Myself for Loving You”
Aerosmith and Cher weren’t the only artists whom Child helped to revive their careers in the ‘80s. Jett and her band had a major breakthrough hit with their I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll album in 1981, and they had a couple of minor hits—a cover of Sly and the Family Stone’s ”Everyday People” and “Fake Friends”—off their 1983 album called (of all things) Album. The mid-’80s were slow going commercially for the band, but they achieved a comeback in 1988 with Up Your Alley. Child co-produced the album with longtime Jett associate and producer Kenny Laguna and Ted Nugent producer Ric Browde.
Child co-wrote “I Hate Myself for Loving You” with Jett, and the track became her third and final Top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 8. The track features a guitar solo from former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor, and Todd Rundgren and Utopia bassist Kasim Sulton play on the track (as well as the rest of Up Your Alley). Child and Jett also teamed up to write the follow-up single, “Little Liar,” which went to No. 19.
[RELATED: Behind the Song “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” Made Famous by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts]
The legacy of “I Hate Myself for Loving You” goes beyond its radio airplay. The song has been used—with new lyrics—as the “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” theme song for NBC’s Sunday Night Football since 2006, with Jett playing guitar on the rewritten version. Since 2013, the song has been sung by Carrie Underwood, who had her first hit with the No. 1 smash “Inside Your Heaven,” produced by—you guessed it—Desmond Child.
2. Alice Cooper, “Poison”
Cooper was yet another recipient of Child’s comeback magic. After having released four straight Top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 in the ‘70s, Cooper endured a gradual commercial slide. In the mid-’80s, Cooper took two years off from recording and touring, but in 1986 and 1987, he returned to the charts with Constrictor and Raise Your Fist and Yell, respectively.
However, these were minor hits compared to the Child-produced Trash (1989), which reached No. 20. Child co-wrote nine of the album’s 10 tracks, including “Poison,” which went to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. It became Cooper’s first Top 40 hit since “Clones (We’re All)” edged its way onto the chart in 1980 at No. 40. As with Aerosmith’s comeback hits, Child helped to provide Cooper with a song that had some pop appeal, but the danger implied by the song’s refrain—I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison—expertly evokes his earlier hits, like “School’s Out” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”
3. Barbra Streisand, “Lady Liberty”
For as prolific a songwriter as Child is, it’s astounding that he has written a song by himself exactly one time. Child told People magazine about his contribution to Streisand’s Walls album: “I was asked to write a song for her, and I decided, you know what? I’m going to write this one by myself, and it just flowed out of me. When she sang it, it was so emotional.”
In “Lady Liberty,” Child interpolates part of Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” (the “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” stanza) into the song, and adds the following lines to underscore his vision of an America that welcomes immigrants.
So lift your lamp and lead us through the golden door
Tell the whole damn universe there’s room for all of us and more
Streisand released “Lady Liberty” as the third single from her 2018 album, though it didn’t chart. Walls, however, reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200.
4. Dream Theater, “You Not Me”
The progressive metal band Dream Theater ranks as one of Child’s more unlikely collaborators, and as it was with Streisand, it was a one-shot deal. Prior to Dream Theater recording their fourth album, Falling Into Infinity, their label, East West, went from being a part of Atlantic Records to being affiliated with Elektra Records. With the organizational shift came greater pressure on Dream Theater to produce a mainstream hit, even though their previous album, Awake, reached No. 32 on the Billboard 200.
The band worked with producer Kevin Shirley, who had previously produced The Black Crowes, Rush, Journey, and Aerosmith, among others. Shirley brought in Child to work with guitarist John Petrucci on the lyrics for “You Not Me” (which, prior to Child’s involvement, was called “You or Me”). While the song did go to No. 40 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart, Falling Into Infinity took Dream Theater backwards in terms of popularity, peaking at No. 52. “You Not Me” would be the only song from a Dream Theater studio album that had a writer or co-writer from outside of the band.
Photo by Maury Phillips/Getty Images for ASCAP
