Hysteria (Def Leppard song)

"Hysteria" is a power ballad by the English hard rock band Def Leppard. It is the tenth track on their 1987 album of the same name and was released as the fourth single from that album in November 1987. On VH1 Storytellers: Def Leppard, lead singer Joe Elliott revealed that the song title came from drummer Rick Allen.

Contents

• 7 Bludgeon Riffola Mercury 870 004 7 USA
• Other versions
• References

The mellow ballad features a clean guitar melody that is very reminiscent of "Goodbye Blue Sky" by Pink Floyd, and heavily multi-tracked vocals in its chorus. The "extreme" nature of producer Mutt Lange's recording methods is also exampled in the chorus, where the clean guitar chords were recorded one note at a time as opposed to the traditional method of strumming them, in effect "building" a chord by recording the notes that make them up as one would build a wall by stacking bricks upon each other one-by-one as confirmed by recording engineer Mike Shipley. An acoustic rendition of the song was performed by Elliott and guitarist Phil Collen on the Hysteria edition of VH1's Classic Albums.