1988 Hit Single Defined the Hair Metal Craze When It Released 38 Years Ago Today
On this day in music history, Def Leppard released one of the classic '80s track that would help shape the hair metal era.
Exactly 38 years ago, the English rock band released on of the biggest singles of their career: "Pour Some Sugar On Me." Having already been included on their smash hit album Hysteria in 1987, the song took on a new life when it was officially released as a single on April 16, 1988.
"Pour Some Sugar On Me" would end up debuting on Billboard's Hot 100 just one week after its release and later climbed its way up to the No. 2 position, peaked in July 1988. It is one of Def Leppard's highest-charting singles on the Hot 100, behind the band's only No. 1 hit, "Love Bites."
"Pour Some Sugar On Me" spent a total of 24 weeks on the Hot 100, which is the longest run of any Def Leppard single on that chart.
It's been ranked on a number of music roundups, including VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Songs of the '80s, with the classic Def Leppard track landing at No. 2 on that list, behind only Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer."
Even though "Pour Some Sugar On Me" ended up being a massive success for Def Leppard, the band has previously admitted that the song almost didn't even make the album.
Lead singer Joe Elliot previously told New Zealand outlet Stuff.co.nzthat the band was just about done recording their fourth studio album Hysteria when he was fiddling around on the guitar, playing the chorus of "Pour Some Sugar On Me." When producer Robert Lange walked into the room, he knew the band had to record it, but Elliot was hesitant.
"We had been working on this album for two and a half years, they're not going to want to hear - 'hey we've got a new song,'" he recalled. "He suggested we get it as far as we could before they came back, so we stopped working on whatever we were doing and put a fresh piece of tape on the machine and literally built this song up from scratch."
A few days later, "We played the guys what we had," Elliot said. "The smiles broke out after about 45 seconds, luckily."
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This story was originally published April 16, 2026 at 1:15 AM.