Pat Benatar

Early life

Patricia Mae Andrzejewski was born on January 10, 1953, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York City. Her mother, Mildred (née Knapp; 1928–2016), was a beautician, and her father, Andrew (Andrzej) Andrzejewski (1926–2009), was a sheet metal worker. Andrew was of Polish descent and Mildred was of German, English, and Irish ancestry. Her family moved to North Hamilton Avenue in Lindenhurst, New York, a village in the Long Island town of Babylon.

Career beginnings

Benatar quit her job as a bank teller to pursue a singing career after being inspired by a Liza Minnelli concert she saw in Richmond, Virginia. Benatar had a gig at a Holiday Inn and was hired as a singing waitress at a nightclub named the Roaring Twenties. At the Roaring Twenties, she met and formed a duo with pianist Phil Coxon, which soon expanded to a ten-person lounge band called Coxon's Army, a regular at Sam Miller's basement club. The band gained in popularity and was the subject of a never-aired PBS special; its bassist Roger Capps was later the original bass player for the Pat Benatar Band. The period also yielded Benatar's first single: "Day Gig" (1974), written and produced by Coxon and given a limited local release. Her last...

Love Is A Battlefield

"Love Is a Battlefield" is a song by American singer Pat Benatar, released on September 12, 1983, as the first and only single outside of New Zealand from her live album Live from Earth (1983), though the song itself was a studio recording. It was written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman.

"Love Is a Battlefield" went on to sell over a million records. The song was ranked at number 30 in VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Songs of the 1980s.

Background and composition

Knight and Chapman wrote the song for Benatar initially as a mid tempo song. After some exploration with drum machines and the band, producer Neil Giraldo decided to make it an uptempo song. The single was Benatar's second US million-seller and is tied with "We Belong" as her highest-charting single in the United States. It topped Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart for four weeks and peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1983.

Release

It reached number one on the Australian singles chart in February 1984 and remained there for five weeks, becoming the 11th biggest-selling single of the year. In the Netherlands, the song topped the charts for four weeks; it reached number two on the 1984 year-end chart. The song originally peaked at the bottom of the top 50 in the United Kingdom, but was re-released there in March 1985 following the success of "We Belong" and reached number 17. It was awarded a gold certification in Canada as well.

Music video

The Bob Giraldi-directed music video features Benatar playing a rebellious teenage girl runaway (Benatar was actually 30 at the time). Her abusive father (played by actor Trey Wilson) warns her as she runs away from home after no longer taking the abuse, "If you leave this house now, you can just forget about coming back!", as her mother watches helplessly. Benatar waves goodbye to her brother (played by actor Philip Cruise), who watches sadly from an upstairs window. She later becomes a taxi dancer at a seedy club in the city. She writes letters to her brother, who is reassured that she is okay, as her father begins to regret yelling at her. When she witnesses the club owner (played by actor Gary Chryst) harassing another dancer, Benatar...

Cover versions

In 1982, Chris Norman performed the song before Pat Benatar on an album entitled Rock away your teardrops.

We Belong

"We Belong" is a song recorded by American rock singer Pat Benatar, released through Legacy Music Group on October 16, 1984, as the lead single from her fifth studio album, Tropico (1984). The song was written by the songwriting duo of Eric Lowen and Dan Navarro.

It matched the success of "Love Is a Battlefield" on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in the United States, peaking at #5. It reached #3 on Billboard's Top Rock Tracks chart and #34 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

Reception

Cash Box magazine said "This first single taken from the Tropico album is a collage of eclectic-electric effects and a sensitive and mature vocal offering from Benatar. Definitely not the standard Benatar/Geraldo [sic] hard rock jam, 'We Belong' is an ode to love which shows a whole world of vocal and instrumental nuances that have not been explored before by the powerful vocalist and her husband-producer-guitarist Neil Geraldo [sic]. An excellent move forward which should open up new commercial doors for this already well-established team."