We're Not Gonna Take It

This is the mighty anthem for anyone lashing out at an authority figure and ready to put up a fight. The song is short on specifics, so it can apply to just about any situation where "we" are battling "the powers that be." This all-purpose approach was intentional and gave the song a timeless quality. In our interview with Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, he explained: "With 'We're Not Gonna Take It,' whether I was singing about my parents, my teachers, my bosses, my peers, people around me, I felt it was important not to define it by actually naming names and singing, 'Dad, you're so trite and jaded, I hate my teachers, too.' And thus, the song has had a life in sporting events, at political rallies, at protests, pretty much anybody who's not taking something from somebody else, they're going to break into 'We're Not Gonna Take It' all over the world."

Twisted Sister wrote this song to the basic tune of "O Come All Ye Faithful." On their 2006 album A Twisted Christmas, they did a version of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" with using the traditional lyrics but set to the music of "We're Not Gonna Take It."

Dee Snider started writing this song in 1980, two years before Twisted Sister released their first album, Under the Blade. He had the hook, but couldn't come up with a verse melody. After Def Leppard released their Pyromania album in 1983, Snider came up with a plan. "In studying some of Mutt Lange's work with Def Leppard, I saw that a number of their songs were using variations on the chorus as a verse," he told us. "That gave me the information I needed to come up with the rest of 'We're Not Gonna Take It.'" The song was finished in time for Twisted Sister's third album, Stay Hungry, which was their breakthrough, taking them out of the clubs and into arenas. "We're Not Gonna Take It," released as the first single, led the charge thanks to the innovative video with cartoonish violence featuring a young kid that turns into Snider, telling his father he's "Not gonna take it!" With frequent airplay on the emerging MTV, Twisted Sister was exposed to a large and more youthful audience, and soon they were all over the media. What many didn't realize was that band had been around for over a decade by this time, and had already built a loyal following in the New York area. On the Stay Hungry tour, Snider would often commend the fans that were there when you couldn't catch them on MTV.