Writers: Def Leppard
Producer: Robert John “Mutt” Lange
Recorded: 1986 at studios in Holland and England
Released: Summer 1987
Players: | Joe Elliott — vocals Steve Clark — guitar, vocals Pete Willis — guitar, vocals Rick Savage — bass, vocals Rick Allen — drums |
Album: | Hysteria (Mercury, 1987) |
The third single from Def Leppard's Hysteria album, “Pour Some Sugar On Me” reached Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1988.
The song also made it to Number 18 on the U.K. chart.
Frontman Joe Elliott notes that “Pour Some Sugar On Me” was not part of the original master plan for the album. “It kind of got written by accident at the end of the Hysteria sessions. Turned out to be one of the most important songs we ever did.”
Elliot's assessment of what the song is about: “Pure sex.”
“Pour Some Sugar On Me” did jump-start the moribund Hysteria album, which started slowly before hitting Number One on the Billboard 200 nearly a year after its release. In the U.K., however, the album debuted at Number One in the fall of 1987.
Hysteria was a difficult album to make, delayed first by the New Year's Eve 1984 auto accident that left drummer Rick Allen with a severed left arm and later by producer “Mutt” Lange's creative burnout. All told, it took nearly three years for Hysteria to be completed.
Nevertheless, it's Def Leppard's most successful studio album, selling more than 11 million copies in the U.S. alone.