"Love Is a Battlefield" is a song by American singer Pat Benatar, released on September 12, 1983, as a single from Benatar's live album Live from Earth (1983), though the song itself was a studio recording. It was written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman. The song was ranked at number 30 in VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Songs of the 1980s.[3] "Love Is a Battlefield" went on to sell over a million records.[4]
Background and composition
Knight and Chapman wrote this 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.[5][6] 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.[7]
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.[8] In the Netherlands, the song topped the charts for four weeks; it reached number two on the 1984 year-end chart. The song was re-released in the United Kingdom in March 1985 and reached number 17.[9] It was awarded a gold certification in Canada as well.[10]
The single was unlike most of Benatar's previous work, as it featured an electronic dance element, but guitars and drums were still present. In 1984, the song won Benatar her fourth consecutive Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.[11]
The Bob Giraldi-directed music video[13] features Benatar playing a rebellious teenage girl running away from her home (although Benatar was actually 30 at the time). Her father (played by actor Trey Wilson) berates her 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 rounds up her fellow dancers and leads a rebellion against him. The dancers get the upper hand on the club owner and escape from the club, dancing off as the sun rises. After thanking Benatar for helping liberate them, the dancers bid each other goodbye and all go their separate ways. The video ends with Benatar sitting in the back of a bus headed for an unknown destination. The video was choreographed by Michael Peters,[14] who appears briefly in the video.
A special dance club remix of the song was created by Jellybean Benitez. Benitez also created an edited version of his mix specifically for the video. It differs slightly in structure and instrumentation, and aside from appearing in the video, has never been commercially released.
The video was one of the first ever to feature the use of dialogue - Philip Bailey's "I Know" was the first but Benatar's got more exposure.[15] The scenes featuring dialogue include the opening argument scene between Benatar and her father in which he shouts at her, "If you leave this house now, you can just forget about coming back!" and the scene when the club owner harasses the taxi dancer, causing her to scream "Leave me alone!" at him.
