Songoftheday 12/9/12 - I see your face every time I dream on every page, every magazine, So wild and free so far from me You're all I want my fantasy...

Def Leppard - "Photograph"
from the album Pyromania (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #12 (one week)
Weeks in the top-40: 9

Today's Song of the Day was the first big hit for British mainstream hard-rock group Def Leppard, who were the first "heavy metal" group to come into the mainstream. They came together in the late 70s in the blue-collar city of Sheffield, and released their first album, On Through The Night, in the beginning of 1980. In included their first British chart hit from a year before, "Wasted", and another single, "Hello America", did even better, just missing the UK top-40 at #45. With their double-guitar attack, their stature in the rock fandom grew. By the next year, the band put out High N Dry, which scored them their first US rock radio hit, "Let It Go".

When it came to record their third album, Pyromania, Def Leppard switched main guitarist by hiring Phil Collen (not the Genesis guy), and retaining Robert "Mutt" Lange to produce the album that would become the first "big" metal album of the 80s. The first single, "Photograph", was a bright, hook-filled bundle of rock goodness written by the group about an unapproachable woman...

"Photograph" shot to the top of the Billboard rock radio chart, and was a top-20 hit amidst the new-wave and soft-rock dominating the chart, but in their native England it was a relative bust, stalling at #66.

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In 2000, Warrant lead singer Jani Lane recorded the song on an 80s-covers album...

Six years later, All-American Rejects performed the song live on a benefit show on VH1...

The biggest alternate version of the song was done by guitar legend Santana with Chris Daughtry, which made the top-40 of the rock chart in 2011...

That same year, indie-rockers Murder Mystery did a different take on the song for a "guilty pleasures" compilation...

Up tomorrow: The Gambler returns the favor of a Commodore.