What Song Was the Scorpions’ First Major U.S. Hit?

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Blackout (Remastered) Song: No One Like You

Album: Blackout (1982)

Label: Mercury

Although the album Blackout was not the Scorpions’ first album to break in America, it offered up their first major hit: No One Like You.

Scorpions had already had album success with 1979’s Lovedrive (1979), which featured guitar work from both original guitarist Michael Schenker, Rudolph Schenker’s brother and co-founder (Michael Schenker was the legendary and influential guitarist of UFO), as well as then-new guitarist Matthias Jabs.

The title song, Lovedrive and Another Piece of Meat, were both very popular at the time. It is not the hard rocking songs from that album that most people think of today, though, as this set also featured the Scorpion’s ballads Always Somewhere and the Holiday, which every guitarist seems to know!

Scorpions band portrait

Scorpions toured America and opened for Ted Nugent to support Lovedrive and then followed up with Animal Magnetism in 1980, which went Gold in the U.S. Another D-chord ballad, Lady Starlight is well remembered but it’s The Zoo, with one of the best heavy rock riffs ever, that you are most likely to hear on the radio, not to mention the title song Animal Magnetism, the intro of which seems to be a standard reference for every aspiring garage-band guitar God.

Nevertheless, it was the success of No One Like You, from their next album, Blackout, in 1982, which received massive radio play and allowed Scorpions to tour major arenas as a headlining act, and set them up for the album, and the song that they are most associated with, Love at First Sting (1983) and one of the greatest heavy-rock songs ever written and performed, Rock You Like a Hurricane, and still one of the Scorpions greatest hits. Don’t expect scintillating lyrics or deep alternative musings, it’s just raw rock n’ roll.

Watch the Scorpions performing No One Like You below, in a 1985 California performance.

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