Stone Cold by Rainbow

Album: Straight Between The Eyes (1982)

Charted: 34 40

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Songfacts®:

Written by band members Joe Lynn Turner, Ritchie Blackmore and Roger Glover, this song is about a guy whose lover has left him out in the cold.

Turner wrote the lyric after spotting a despondent Glover and asking him what was wrong. Said Glover: "She left me stone cold."

"I heard the story of what happened - the usual divorce proceedings - and I went back to my room and wrote the lyric," Turner said in the book The Other Side of Rainbow. "I knew I had something with that mood that we were putting down."
While the focus of many Rainbow songs was on Blackmore's guitar, Joe Lynn Turner's vocals are the high point of this track. Turner was Rainbow's third lead singer, following Ronnie James Dio and Graham Bonnet.
In America, this is Rainbow's most popular song. It rose to #1 on the Modern Rock chart and was also their only song to crack the Top 40 on the Hot 100. Years later, the song made its way onto the playlists of many classic rock stations.
Much of the song's American success came thanks to MTV, which was just a year old when this song was released. Rainbow, like many British bands, had been making videos for a while, and for "Stone Cold" they made an attention-grabbing clip with smoke, mirrors and mannequins. It was directed by Edd Griles, who produced the first MTV Video Music Awards.

Comments: 6

Dave Schacht from IlThis is certainly NOT Rainbow's most popular track in The US! It gets completely ignored by classic rock radio stations in favor of "Since You Been Gone" which, frankiy, I'm tired of hearing. Once in awhile, you might also hear "Man On the Silver Mountain", or "Street of Dreams", but you barely hear "Stone Cold" which I think is a disgrace since it was Rainbow's only US Top Forty hit. They're one of the few artists whose lone hit seldom gets played on classic rock radio stations.
Don from Sevierville, TnI think this resembles the Foreigner song, Waiting for a Girl Like You (which Joe Lynn Turner would later cover on a solo album). I heard that Ronnie James Dio called the Joe Lynn Turner era Rainbow Foreigner Jr.
Rusputtin from Atlanta, GaMy introduction to Rainbow was thru Stone Cold...killer track!
Jim from Long Beach, CaThis song is about a cold bitch.
Tye from Guthrie, OkAbout a girl who just has no feelings toward you/doesn't care. Empty... no love for you in her heart i dunno..
Damar from Pittsburgh, PaThe song's video was directed by Edd Griles who would later did some classic videos from Huey Lewis and Cyndi Lauper.

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