3 First-Time Singles That Became Major Hits in the 1970s

When you’re releasing a debut single, it can really set the tone for your music to come and the audience you want to attract. Here are three killer hits from the 1970s that also happened to be debut singles.

“Feels Like The First Time” by Foreigner

Foreigner’s Mick Jones wrote this song. “Feels Like The First Time” was written about the many changes happening in his life. He had officially moved to America shortly after getting remarried. It was created during a transitional time. Vocalist Lou Gramm was also discovered by Jones through an audition while he was working on the band’s first single.

“I was writing [Foreigner’s first single] ‘Feels Like the First Time’ at the time,” Jones told Billboard. “And it sounds so corny, but it really was starting to feel like the first time. And I heard Lou’s voice from one side of the room — I was sitting at the piano, or the guitar — from the other side of the room, and somehow, [snaps], it just stuck, y’know?”

“Dream On” by Aerosmith

I mean, what a great debut single for a group. Aerosmith’s “Dream On” was written by Steven Tyler. He started on the song when he was about seventeen or eighteen years old. The singer shared in his memoir Walk This Way:

“The music for ‘Dream On’ was originally written on a Steinway upright piano in the living room of Trow-Rico Lodge in Sunapee, maybe four years before Aerosmith even started. I was seventeen or eighteen…”

Although this was Aerosmith’s first single in 1973, it didn’t truly become a hit until two years later, in 1976.

“Hold The Line” by Toto

Although it’s no “Africa”, this song, which was partially inspired by the phone call saying “hold the line,” was a killer debut single for the rock band Toto.

David Paich of Toto drew on his own experience as a teenager juggling calls from multiple women at once. “Hold The Line” is an attempt to figure out what love really means, regardless of whether you’re the one calling or the one answering.

Photo by: Goedefroit Music/Getty Images

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