Song of the Day 9/26: Scorpions, “Rock You Like a Hurricane”

As Hurricane Helene prepares to strike Florida’s Gulf Coast, I’m reminded of how frequently those storms come up in popular music, at least here in the Western Hemisphere. Hurricanes go all the way back to the source in rock ‘n’ roll. It’s right there in the second verse of Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music,” even if he does pronounce it the Spanish way, with a soft ‘a,’ so it rhymes with ‘band’:

I took my loved one over cross the tracks
So she can hear my man awailin’ sax
I must admit they have a rockin’ band
Man they were blowin’ like a hurricane

If hurricanes are good enough for Chuck Berry, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Levon Helm, they’re damn well good enough for a German hard rock band like Scorpions, founded in 1965 and still active today.

“Rock You Like a Hurricane” appeared on the band’s ninth album, 1984’s “Love at First Sting,” but it was their first U.S. hit. Though it only reached No. 25 on the Hot 100 it got heavy exposure on MTV, boosting the LP to No. 6 and making Scorpions hard rock headliners throughout the ’80s.

As you can see on the video they eschewed the glam overtones of U.S. hair metal, but their sound was widely adopted before the genre was eclipsed by grunge in the early ’90s. Despite their influence and their 100 million records sold, they’ve never even been nominated for the Hall of Fame.