New releases, music videos and album news — indie, rap, rock and pop. Always covering Ren, Chris Webby, Sam Tompkins, bbno$, CHINCHILLA, Muse, Yungblud and more.
“This is going to be tough”: Survivor’s battle to top a 1980 Queen hit
Sylvester Stallone first asked Queen to let him use “Another One Bites the Dust” in *Rocky III*, but the band declined. He then commissioned Survivor to write an original, street-sounding song, giving the struggling group a chance to break through; the result, “Eye of the Tiger”, became closely tied to the film and its underdog story.
Survivor’s Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan saw a rough cut of the film with Queen’s song already matched to the boxing scene and feared it would be hard to beat. They shaped the track around a sharp guitar riff in three days. Released in 1982, it became the band’s first number-one hit, spending six weeks atop the US Billboard Hot 100 and ranking as the year’s second-bestselling single; Sullivan wrote it using a guitar with a repaired headstock.
In short
- Queen declined Stallone’s request to use “Another One Bites the Dust” in *Rocky III*.
- Survivor wrote “Eye of the Tiger” in three days.
- The 1982 hit spent six weeks at number one in the US.