Women

As a general rule, women don't like songs called "Women," especially when they're prurient tales of male desire set in biblical times. When they released this song, Def Leppard knew that it would gin up their core audience but would have little appeal to the female fans who had made them superstars. It took three years for the band to complete the Hysteria album, and when they did they released "Women" as the first single in America, where their previous album Pyromania sold over 10 million copies. While the band considered "Animal" to be the natural first single, they wanted to make sure their hardcore American fans, which were men, would get what they were hoping for in the first taste of the new album, and a swaggering song about beautiful women was the perfect choice for an introduction. The song just grazed the charts at #80, but it was played on rock stations and helped build a buzz for Hysteria, which sold about 1.5 million copies before "Animal" was released as the next single.

Like all the songs on Hysteria, "Women" was written by the band, and their producer Mutt Lange was also given a songwriter credit. Def Leppard had some very high-profile misadventures - like drummer Rick Allen losing an arm when he crashed his Corvette - but for the most part they were a very tame rock band, working hard to craft songs that would sell and give strong performances on stage. They didn't surround themselves with groupies, and this song is much more a tribute to women than a boasting of their conquests.

Van Halen would have put babes all over a video for a song like this, but Def Leppard didn't go that route. In fact, there is not a single woman on screen for the duration of the video - unless you count the ones that show up in the magic comic book the boy is reading. Jean Pellerin, who also did the videos for "Hysteria" and "Love Bites," was the director.