One-Hit Wonders: Scandal And “The Warrior”
Scandal - "The Warrior" (Columbia, 1984)
According to legend, Patty Smyth‘s audition for Scandal was so disorganized, the event ended in a shouting match between Smyth and band leader, Zack Smith. Didn’t seem to matter: Smyth joined the band and Scandal scored their lone Top 10 hit in 1984 with “The Warrior.”
The daughter of a club manager in New York, Patty Smyth was well-acquainted with the world of backstage rock and roll when she joined Scandal in 1982. The next year, Columbia released the five song EP called Scandal, a set that would become their biggest selling EP to date.
Though MTV and rock radio supported the song “Goodbye To You,” Top 40 radio wouldn’t get onboard until 1984 when Columbia released the title cut to The Warrior.
Along with winning a BMI Airplay award that year (and topping the rock radio chart), the song his #7 on the pop chart.
Since that time, it’s been used as the theme song of a pro wrestler, hit the video game market in Guitar Hero and Grand Theft Auto and been sung by Stewie on Family Guy.
Gone but not forgotten, at least not at WNEW, find more tales of One-Hit Wonders here …
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Jimi LaLumia
January 18, 2012 4:50 pm
the inspiration for “The Warrior”, visually and the warrior reference itself, is UK 80′s female icon Toyah, who costumed herself in the face paint and out fits copied in this video, and whose live album “Warrior Rock-Live” was a huge hit in England in 1983; Toyah’s records never got released here, so most of the MTV audience didn’t even catch the intentional(or unintentional) homage to TOYAH!, the true WARRIOR!!