Pat Benatar – “Heartbreaker”

TOP 40 DEBUT: February 9, 1980

PEAK POSITION: #23 (March 15, 1980)

Here’s a statement that shouldn’t be as controversial as it is: At the beginning of her career, Pat Benatar absolutely rocked. She rocked as hard as any of the testosterone-heavy combos (Styx, Supertramp, Boston, et al) dominating FM radio towards the tail end of the Seventies. She rocked in a way often obscured by her later, more mainstream pop hits. And she rocked in a way most female vocalists of her era—especially classical-trained ones—never did.

Benatar’s first album, In The Heat Of The Night, came along six months before Chrissie Hynde unveiled Pretenders, more than a year before Joan Jett made her solo debut with Bad Reputation, and a full two years before Stevie Nicks adopted a harder edge on her own solo effort, Bella Donna. She arrived just as the few, female-led vanguard acts began shifting focus, whether that meant Ann and Nancy Wilson softening Heart’s sound to appease Top 40, or Debbie Harry and Blondie leaving CBGB’s behind for the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100. During a period when female voices were few and far between, Benatar carried the torch for women in rock. For a while, she did it almost entirely alone.

Decades later, history gave nearly every one of the above artists their overdue acclaim. Blondie, Heart, Joan, Chrissie, Stevie: All of them now reside in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; all of them absolutely deserve to be there. But Pat is still on the outside looking in. And that’s a damn shame, because Benatar absolutely deserves to be there, too. Just a single listen to “Heartbreaker”—a shotgun blast of pure rock adrenaline powerful enough to beat the boys on their home turf—oughta tell you that much.

Patricia Andrzejewski came from blue-collar roots: born in Brooklyn, raised in Long Island, the daughter of a beautician and a sheet-metal worker. Young Patricia didn’t waste time, either. She started taking vocal lessons before the age of ten; by the time she graduated high school, Pat was a classically-trained mezzo-soprano. Her initial plan was to attend Julliard and sing opera (specifically, coloratura). Instead, she dropped out of Stony Brook University after six months to marry her high school sweetheart, Dennis Benatar. In early 1972, the U.S. Army stationed Dennis in Fort Lee, Virginia. Pat worked in nearby Richmond as a bank teller.

After attending a Liza Minnelli concert in 1973, a suitably inspired Benatar quit her bank job to pursue music full-time. She sang lead with a Richmond lounge band, Coxon’s Army, and released one local single, “Day Gig,” produced by the group’s leader, Phil Coxon. The Benatars moved back to New York City in 1975, where Pat soon acquired her first manager. Rick Newman owned the comedy club Catch A Rising Star; Pat signed up for one of their open mic nights. Her 2 A.M. performance of a Judy Garland song not only earned a standing ovation, but also kicked off a working relationship with Newman that would last fifteen years.

Benatar became a regular at Catch A Rising Star, building enough of a following to eventually secure a headlining gig at popular NYC nightclub Tramp’s by the spring of ’78. Newman invited representatives from multiple record companies to attend her four-night showcase. A week later, Chrysalis co-founder Terry Ellis signed her to his label. More than a year passed before Pat finally finished recording her debut LP, In The Heat Of The Night. By that point, the Benatars had nearly finalized their divorce. Pat would keep her first husband’s surname for the remainder of her career, but her second spouse wound up becoming her true partner: in marriage, and in music, from her initial album right up to the present day.

Neil “Spyder” Giraldo entered Pat Benatar’s orbit in early 1979. A Cleveland-born multi-instrumentalist, he’d landed his big break just a year earlier, beating out 200 other guitar players for a spot in Rick Derringer’s band. (Derringer’s only Top 40 hit, “Rock And Roll, Hoochie Koo,” peaked at #23 in 1973. It’s an 8.) Giraldo was enjoying some downtime between tours when he received a call from Mike Chapman, an Australian producer best known for helming a string of British hits from The Sweet, Suzi Quatro, and Smokie. Chrysalis had hired Chapman with the intent to steer Benatar’s debut in a more new-wave direction, so the producer came to the project immediately after finishing work on The Knack’s Get The Knack and Blondie’s Eat To The Beat. (1979 was a very good year for Mike Chapman.)

Chapman needed a musical director—and lead guitarist—for Benatar’s backing band; Giraldo needed a job before the next Derringer tour. To say that he and Benatar meshed well would be an understatement. Recording sessions for In The Heat Of The Night finished in July ’79, around the same time the guitarist informed Derringer he wouldn’t be coming back. Giraldo would go on to play on every single album Benatar ever made. Starting in 1981, he would produce them all, too. (And yes, Pat and Neil finally tied the knot in ’82.)

Rock n’ roll wasn’t Pat Benatar’s first love. She’d grown up on musical theater; she started her professional career performing cabaret numbers and show tunes. But in Giraldo, Benatar found the perfect artistic foil: someone who understood the inner workings of guitar-based rock, could tailor that sound to her specific strengths, and—most importantly—wouldn’t try to claim all the credit for her accomplishments. In the chauvinistic music industry of the late ‘70s, this was a rare trait.

“Patricia has a voice from the heavens, which is her instrument,” the guitarist explained in a 2015 interview. “She doesn’t play another, nor does she have to, [so she] deferred to me to do all the things I do best: arranging, producing, song structure.” Benatar turned out to have a natural affinity for melodic rock, along with the perfect tough-yet-feminine image to sell that style in the era of MTV. She would’ve been a star with or without Giraldo’s help. But I’m not sure she hits the ground running—or achieves the same level of chart success—without such a generous musical partner by her side.

Chapman laid much the groundwork for In The Heat Of The Night, from assembling the session players to tracking down suitable cover options. (His Pat-approved choices ranged from expected glam-rock hits by The Sweet and Nick Gilder to a surprisingly subdued ballad from the Alan Parsons Project.) But officially, Chrysalis only hired him to produce three of the album’s ten tracks. Two were straight remakes of songs he’d originally written for Smokie; the third was a disappointingly flat take on John Cougar’s “I Need A Lover.”

(Side note: The original “Lover,” in all its modulating glory, reached #28 in December 1979. It’s a 9. Benatar’s gender-neutral version tamped down most of the misogyny, while unfortunately neutering the bulk of Cougar’s raucous energy in the process. Contrary to online statements, the label never released “Lover” as an actual commercial single, but AOR radio played the hell out of it anyway, enough for Pat to later admit the song “laid the groundwork” for “Heartbreaker”’s eventual success.)

Shortly before leaving the project, Chapman urged Giraldo and studio engineer Peter Coleman to finish the record together, rather than bringing in another outside party. Coleman wound up producing the album’s remaining seven tracks; Giraldo arranged all of them. “Heartbreaker” was the very first song recorded following Chapman’s departure. In her 2010 memoir Between A Rock And A Hard Place, Benatar described that session with a single word: “blistering.”

“Heartbreaker” was lean, mean, and muscular, a charging anthem with the kind of propulsion needed to leap out of the speakers and send listeners straight to the record store. Everyone in Benatar’s camp thought it was a surefire hit. The label had other ideas. “Chrysalis, in their continuing infinite wisdom… didn't see it,” Benatar later wrote. “Those guys were positive that disco loving deejays would not play the song because there was too much guitar on it." “If You Think You Know How To Love Me,” an ”edgy” rendition of a British soft-rock smash from 1975, was picked as the first single instead. It failed to chart.

In The Heat Of The Night had been on shelves nearly six months when Chrysalis finally released “Heartbreaker” to radio. The effect was immediate, and explosive. Rock stations jumped on the song, followed by Top 40; Benatar soon got kicked off her current tour (supporting forgotten rocker David Werner) because audiences were turning out to see her, rather than the headliner. “Heartbreaker” fit Pat’s persona so perfectly, few realized the song wasn’t actually hers. In fact, like most of the other Night tracks, it had originated on someone else’s record. But even amongst those other covers, “Heartbreaker” was still an outlier: the only true obscurity in the bunch, and the only one originally performed by another woman.

In a different universe, Jenny Darren could’ve been the British Benatar. She had the pipes and the attitude (plus enough fortitude to survive a stint opening for AC/DC); she’d also recorded Pat’s breakout hit a year earlier. But DJM Records, the U.K. label that launched Elton John to superstardom, missed the boat with Darren. “Heartbreaker” had been written specifically for the singer by Geoff Gill and Chris Wade (former members of English mod outfit The Smoke), eventually securing the leadoff position on her 1978 album Queen Of Fools. But DJM never bothered to release a single until the Benatar version was already charting in England. By the time Darren’s original hit stores, it was too late. (In 2018, she claimed DJM’s indecision probably cost her “a few million.”)

Darren made one final rock album in 1980—with future Iron Maiden member Nicko McBrain on drums, amazingly enough—before abandoning the genre altogether. She would spend the next three decades performing jazz sets in local clubs without a label deal. She never scored that hit record; none of her music appeared on CD before 2015. When a 68-year-old Darren resurfaced on Britian’s Got Talent in 2018, no one had any idea who she was.

I’m not sure if Benatar actually outsings Jenny Darren, a talented performer who deserved a better career than she actually got. But Pat’s hit version is clearly the better of the two, illustrating the chasm between a good recording and a great one. Darren’s bluesy bluster often overwhelms a basic, by-the-numbers production that never quite matches her intensity; by contrast, Benatar slips into her arrangement like a hand in a (long, black) glove. She’s equal parts standoffish and seductive, projecting maximum confidence with minimum effort. A lesser vocalist might try to convey power through over-emoting or sheer, brute force; Benatar simply struts in like she owns the place. That level of control is rare even among experienced artists. To find it on the opening track of a debut album is astonishing.

“Heartbreaker” still needed a lot of work to reach its now-familiar, hit-ready form. With the blessing of DJM, Benatar rewrote several of the lyrics, specifically removing British lingo that would confuse stateside audiences: “Your love is like an A to Zed” became “your love has set my soul on fire,” while a rhyme between “heartbreaker” and “moon-raker” got jettisoned for fear that Americans wouldn’t grasp the English slang term for “dimwit.” (Or they’d have flashbacks to the god-awful Bond film of the same name, which seems infinitely worse.)

The song’s structure went through similar revisions, getting tougher and spikier as “Heartbreaker” transitioned from British pub-rock to its meaner, harder Americanized counterpart. Extra guitar muscle beefed up the verses; a standard solo break was replaced with twisty, snaky passages played in tandem with the rhythm section. I always assumed this particular arrangement was the invention of Giraldo, perhaps working alongside Chapman. In fact, those modifications were already present in Pat’s initial recording of “Heartbreaker,” an attempt that predated both men’s involvement.

Chrysalis’ first crack at making Benatar’s album actually occurred back in ’78, not long after she’d originally been signed. The label sent their newest acquisition to New York City, where a team of studio ringers—including David Letterman’s future bandleader, Paul Shaffer—had been assembled to cut basic tracks. Heading the session was Ron Dante, longtime producer for Barry Manilow. (Dante sang lead on the Archies’ #1 hit, “Sugar, Sugar.” It's a 10.) Their early version of “Heartbreaker” wasn’t that different from the official release, honestly. But Benatar hated it: "The tracks were played technically well, but they had no soul, no passion. The music was so uninspiring that I couldn't conjure any fire in the vocals." “Heartbreaker” needed one more element to achieve its true potential. It needed Neil Giraldo.

“I heard it in my head but I couldn’t get anybody to play what I was hearing,” Benatar related in her memoir. “And the minute [Neil] walked in, he knew exactly what I was talking about. He played it exactly the way that I wanted it.” Technically, the guitarist didn’t do much more than copy the arrangement already concocted by Dante and his pros. But there’s something rough and ready in Giraldo’s playing, an unvarnished urgency—enhanced by Coleman’s less-is-more production—that brings out the best in Benatar. Her “Heartbreaker” would never be mistaken for actual metal. And yet, it bears all the hallmarks of the genre: palm-muted power chords, stop-and-start accents, and soaring, operatic vocals from the artist herself. It’s easily the heaviest song of Benatar’s whole career. I’m not sure another comes close.

An opening tribal drumbeat thunders in like a cavalry charge; three minutes later comes an over-the-top ending familiar to anyone who’s attended a rock show within the last fifty years. In between, “Heartbreaker” delivers a halftime chorus breakdown, a middle section of cascading unison riffs, and a full forty seconds of guitar pyrotechnics down the final stretch. Benatar and her team weren’t reinventing the wheel, or trying to make some grand statement. Yet their adherence to the specific touchstones of hard rock was, paradoxically, its own statement: In playing by the same rules as the men, “Heartbreaker” proved this particular “rock chick” could go toe-to-toe with any sweaty, hairy dude out there.

Nowhere is that better illustrated than at the song’s halfway point, that hair-raising climax when the music slams headfirst into a brick wall, allowing twin Pat Benatars to lift their voices in multi-tracked unison: “You’re the right kind of sinner/ To release my inner fantasy/ The invincible winner/ And you know that you are born to be.” The beat drops away. The band pounds a battering-ram staccato. The high harmony threatens to shatter glass. It’s a classic Rock Star Spotlight, a prerequisite for every golden-throated frontman from Plant to Mercury. “Heartbreaker” is where Benatar gets hers. And then she goes one better.

Just as the track crescendos to another peak, everything stops. No guitars, no drums. No layers, no effects. Just Pat, alone and unadorned, singing you’re a heartbreaker, dream maker with the quiet steeliness of a blade piercing soft skin. The moment lasts all of six seconds. That’s how long it took for Pat Benatar to become a star.

Of all the big-name artists this site has covered so far, Benatar is the first to show up at the absolute beginning of her career. And she’s gonna stick around for a while. The success of “Heartbreaker” would lead to fourteen more Top 40 singles between 1980 and 1988, and nearly as many guises: the pop chanteuse with a rock n’ roll heart, the MTV siren on the rocks, the pinup fantasy telling you to stop using sex as a weapon. But none of these successive phases brought us any closer to the pure, unfiltered rock of her breakthrough single. Maybe her music simply evolved. Maybe the shift was calculated, brought on at the behest of a still-skittish record label. Or maybe Pat Benatar understood she’d already made her point, loudly and definitively. After “Heartbreaker,” what else did she need to prove?

GRADE: 8/10

I WANT MY MTV: Benatar, bless her heart, made some terrible videos over the years. (I say this as someone who still loves those songs in spite of said terrible videos.) This particular clip for “Heartbreaker” is not official; it comes from the Dutch program TopPop, known for production values high enough to rival—or occasionally, become—an artist’s actual promo. As it turned out, Benatar wound up emulating this straightforward, “live” performance template for the next two years of label-sanctioned videos. That was a smart idea. (Smarter than dancing prostitutes, anyway.)

BONUS BITS: Lil’ Kim used the chorus from “Heartbreaker” for “Don’t Mess With Me,” a cut from her 2000 album The Notorious K.I.M. 2000 was, unfortunately, a peak year for “chipmunk soul,” the early-aughts hip-hop trend of speeding up samples to ridiculous levels. You’ve been warned.

BONUS BONUS BITS: As always, Alvin and his boys were twenty years ahead of the curve.