My Top 9 Favorite Dokken Songs
Anyone can do a Top 5 or Top 10 list.
Look, anyone can do Top 10 or Top 5 lists. It takes a really advanced blogger to use a completely random number for a ‘best of’ list and this is my Top 9. Why that number? Why not? You’ve been sold a bill of goods your whole life that these kinds of lists have to be multiples of five or 10. They do not. Hence, this is my Top 9 list of my all-time favorite Dokken songs. The next list might be more or less. It could be a multiple of five or 10. It could be just two. Yeah. I'm just crazy enough to do a Top 2 list. I’m unpredictable like that.
But enough of my idiotic preamble. You clicked to open this story, so presumably that means you’re at least somewhat knowledgeable about the band or you just like my writing so much that you’re willing to put up with a topic you know nothing about just to read more of it. The reason doesn’t matter. You’re here now, so you might as well go ahead and finish at this point.
9. “Dream Warriors” — Back for the Attack (1987)
This is the cheesiest song on the list and the fact that it was written for the film Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors probably has a lot to do with that. Despite that, I really enjoy the chorus to this one. It’s a bit of an earworm and I find it stuck in my head from time to time. Back for the Attack is a better album than many people give it credit for — I’d place it third overall and "Burning Like a Flame" might be on this list if I expanded it to a Top 10 — and often this song is one of the things people point to as a problem. I think it’s a feature, not a bug.
8. “Into the Fire” — Tooth and Nail (1984)
The first time I saw Dokken was on the tour for this album. They were opening for Sammy Hagar in Columbus and they played about 45 minutes. That’s not unusual for an opening band but I really wish they’d stayed on a while longer. This is one of my preferred tracks on Tooth and Nail but I’ll freely admit there isn’t anything all that special about it. It’s a good rock track and it’s fairly catchy. I like it a lot (I mean, I enjoy it enough to include it here) but I would never argue that it’s one of the all-time great rock songs. It gets the job done and sometimes I’ll skip the two tracks right before it just to get to it.
7. “The Hunter” — Under Lock and Key (1985)
One of the band’s better known songs, assisted by its video on Mtv, “The Hunter” is a mid-tempo rock track in the format a lot of 80s bands used. It’s somewhere between a ballad and a rocker but not really either one. George Lynch’s guitar lick in the middle of the chorus, just after Don Dokken sings “I’m a hunter, searchin’ for love on these lonely streets again,” makes the song for me. I have to physically stop myself from singing that lick. Dokken sings the hell out of this song and that’s another part of what makes it so good.
6. “Unchain the Night” — Under Lock and Key (1985)
The band really belts out this album opener and it’s one of the more raw sounding songs from the first few albums. It starts out with a bit of atmospheric guitar before the crunch kicks in. Don pushes his vocal range at times on this, which adds to the rawness of it.
5. “Tooth and Nail” — Tooth and Nail (1984)
Despite following a short intro piece called “Without Warning,” this is basically the start of the album as the band kicks into this up-tempo metal thumper. Lynch blasts through this one, almost abusing his guitar at times. For my money, “Tooth and Nail” is the band’s best fast rocker in the catalog. I’m starting to think I put this song too low on the list. But lists were meant to be broken. Wait, no. Sorry, rules are meant to be broken. Lists are often governed by rules, even if they’re only arbitrary ones. OK, I reiterate that lists are meant to be broken. This song might be as high as No. 2 on my list depending on my mood.
4. “Just Got Lucky” — Tooth and Nail (1984)
“Just Got Lucky” was one of the band’s bigger early hits. It comes right on the heels of “Tooth and Nail” and keeps the tempo high. Lynch’s guitar wails in the opening and the solo. The chorus is the kind of infectious sing-along that works great live, and I have lost my voice singing along to this one at a Dokken show at the Newport Music Hall on the band’s tour for Under Lock and Key.
3. “Alone Again” — Tooth and Nail (1984)
Ah yes, the metal ballad. Nothing says “1980s” like a good metal ballad. What a time to be alive. You kids today have no idea. Songs like this one and “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions still make me lose my ever-loving mind. I know many metal purists who hate the power ballad and all it stands for. God forbid someone write something melodic and slow, right? Hey, Dokken got this one right. It’s an outstanding song and Don sings it well.
2. “Breaking the Chains” — Breaking the Chains (1983)
This is a fantastic song from a pretty meh album. Dokken hadn’t even been together very long when they recorded Breaking the Chains. The band seems unfinished and most of the songs reflect that, but this album opener stands out a mile above the rest. It was released in Europe in 1981 but I didn’t start hearing it until the U.S. release two years later. This song showed the band’s potential and remains one of my absolute favorite songs from the so-called 80s “hair metal” bands. It was great to see the band do this one live.
1. “It’s Not Love” — Under Lock and Key (1985)
I love to listen to this middle-pace rocker at ear-bleeding volume. Lynch’s guitar sounds otherworldly at times, almost like something off a horror or science fiction movie soundtrack, but this song is so much better than “Dream Warriors.” The chorus is where the band shines and I enjoy the way the title of the song is shouted and alternates with Don Dokken’s single voice. It’s something the band experimented with on “Live to Rock – Rock to Live” on their Breaking the Chains album in 1983. It didn’t quite come off then but I’m glad they revisited it here because “It’s Not Love” gets it exactly right. It’s also a fantastic audience participation song in concert.
This is probably not a popular pick as a favorite song among the band’s fans, but that’s OK. This is the one that always gets me going. All of the songs on this list are great but this one stands above the rest in my view. The things I like about it are probably what others dislike about it, but to each his own. I used to belt out the “Why baby, why?!” parts in the car as I listened, and I’m pretty sure it sounded excellent when I did. But since there were no witnesses to this, who can honestly say? This is it. My favorite moment from the band.
All of these songs are from a five-year span of the band’s released works, although the band turned out seven albums after the ones from which these songs were taken. I’ll admit I haven’t heard all of them, owing to a personal bias that the band couldn’t be the same without Lynch. However, part of it is that I simply lost track of the band and now that I have access to them via Spotify, I will certainly go and revisit the ones I missed.
What about you? Which are your all-time Dokken faves?