3 Rock Hits From the 80s That Were Written in Under an Hour

In some situations, good things take time, but that’s not always the case for our favorite rock songs. Here are some popular tunes from the 80s that you definitely know. But what you probably didn’t know is that they were written in under an hour.

“(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” by The Beastie Boys 

This song was released as a single for the Beastie Boys‘ debut album, Licensed To III. Initially, it was meant to mock the “party” themed songs that were popular at the time. “Fight For Your Right” took under five minutes to complete. 

“It was summer 1986,” Mike D once explained of the song. “We wrote it in about five minutes.  We were in the Palladium with Rick Rubin, drinking vodka and grapefruit juice, and ‘Fight For Your Right’ was written in the Michael Todd Room on napkins on top of those [expletive] lacy tables.”

“Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen 

Released at the end of 1979, this Queen hit was written in about “5 to 10 minutes,” as Freddie Mercury told Melody Maker. Apparently, Mercury didn’t know many guitar chords, which was actually helpful in writing this one.

“I did that on the guitar, which I can’t play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords,” he explained. “It’s a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework. I couldn’t work through too many chords and because of that restriction I wrote a good song, I think.”

“Every Breath You Take” by The Police

For Sting, writing this No. 1 hit was pretty spontaneous. Apparently, as he told The Independent, he woke up in the middle of the night with the song’s title in mind, and the rest was history.

“I woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head,” he explained. “Sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour. The tune itself is generic, an aggregate of hundreds of others, but the words are interesting. It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn’t realize at the time how sinister it is…”

Photo by: Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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