Thunderstruck

AC/DC's Young brothers - guitarists Angus and Malcolm - wrote this song. They would often tell a story about how the song came about when Angus was flying in a plane that was struck by lightning and nearly crashed, but in the 2003 re-release of The Razors Edge, Angus explained in the liner notes: "It started off from a little trick that I had on guitar. I played it to Mal and he said, 'Oh I've got a good rhythm idea that will sit well in the back.' We built the song up from that. We fiddled about with it for a few months before everything fell into place. Lyrically, it was really just a case of finding a good title, something along the lines of 'Powerage' or 'Highway To Hell.' We came up with this thunder thing and it seemed to have a good ring to it. AC/DC = Power. That's the basic idea."

According to The Story of AC/DC: Let There Be Rock, Angus Young created the distinctive opening guitar part by playing with all the strings taped up, except the B. It was a studio trick he learned from his older brother George Young, who produced some of AC/DC's albums and was in a band called The Easybeats.

This song marked a return to form for AC/DC, whose previous three albums didn't generate any blockbusters. It was the song that set the tone for the album, a truly thunderous track that electrified the crowd as the opening number on The Razors Edge tour. The apostrophe-free album title gels with the song: Australians call the dark clouds of an approaching storm "the razor's edge." The album was recorded with producer Bruce Fairbairn at his Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver, where he also produced Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet and the Aerosmith albums Permanent Vacation and Pump. It was the group's first time working with Fairbairn.