In 1981, Def Leppard released their song “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak.” The song was the second single from the English rock band’s album High ‘n’ Dry.
Written by band members Joe Elliott, Steve Clark, and Pete Willis, “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak” was a power ballad that featured gut-wrenching lyrics about unrequited love. The song didn’t initially chart, and it wasn’t until MTV began playing the music video in heavy rotation that it got a second life.
The performance video was initially shot for Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert when producers for the then-new MTV added it to their playlist as well.
“The High ‘n’ Dry album was already history on the charts, but then MTV started playing ‘Bringin’ On the Heartbreak,'” manager Cliff Burnstein said in the bookAnimal Instinct. “Slowly but surely, we started getting sales reports on the record, and it started selling about 5,000 copies a week – which was enough to get it back on the charts. This was a whole new ball game.”
Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2016, Elliott revealed, “MTV, having nothing to play, liked the idea of this young U.K. rock band, so they picked it up. So six months, maybe a year after High ‘n’ Dry came out, we were making Pyromania, and we started getting these telexes from the States saying, ‘Your album is selling 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 copies a week.’ Then it was 10, 15, 20,000 copies a week. It was heading toward platinum by the time we had Pyromania in the bag. Because of MTV, by 1982, the whole country was playing ‘Heartbreak.'”
A re-release broke the Billboard Hot 100
When Def Leppard released their follow-up album Pyromania in 1984, they capitalized on its popularity by reissuing the High ‘n’ Dry album with a revamped version of “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak”. The lush, synth-heavy remix peaked at No. 61 on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 30, 1984. A new music video was also released.
Decades later, Ultimate Classic Rock ranked “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak” at No. 4 on a long list of Def Leppard’s best songs. The only songs that ranked higher were the radio hits “Hysteria,” “Photograph,” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
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The song underwent another rearrangement for live shows
More than 40 years later, “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak” remains one of Def Leppard’s signature songs. It received a third rearrangement for the band’s live shows.
In an interview with Songfacts, co-lead guitarist Phil Collen, who joined Def Leppard in 1982 after the original version of “Bringin’ On The Heartbreak” was released, revealed that he came up with an idea to rearrange the song to be primarily acoustic for live shows.
“I think it was just because we were doing it over and over again, and it was the same old, same old, so we thought it would be great if we started it acoustic and then went into Steve Clark’s solo,” he explained. “It was halfway, and he’d pick up his twin neck and off he goes.”
“So yeah, it was my idea originally,” the Def Leppard legend added. “What was interesting, around that time Tesla was on tour with us and every time we did that acoustic thing it was a break in the set, and before you knew it, every other band was doing an acoustic set within their set: The Scorpions, Bon Jovi, all the stuff from the ’80s, and Tesla who was on tour with us.”
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