"I'm Eighteen" is a 1970 song by rock band Alice Cooper, featured on their first major label release album Love It to Death. The single, called just "Eighteen", was released in November 1970, three months prior to the album. Even though Warner Bros. Records "considered it a fluke,"[1] it became the band's breakthrough hit, peaking at #21 on the Billboard pop chart in 1971, the year when being 18 years of age was much in the news as the voting age in the United States was lowered to 18 by passage of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Contents[]
Achievements[edit][]
Rolling Stone included the song on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" at #482[2] and had this to say of the song, "Before 'I'm Eighteen,' Cooper was just another hairy rock oddball. But this proto-punk smash defined the age when, in Cooper's words, you're 'old enough to be drafted but not old enough to vote.' Years later, Johnny Rotten sang this at his audition for the Sex Pistols; by then, Cooper was a guest on The Muppet Show."[3]
It was selected by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The song ranked #39 on VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs and appeared on Guitar magazine as one of the 50 heaviest riffs of all time.
Cover versions and appearances in popular culture[edit][]
The song was covered by thrash metal pioneers Anthrax, on their 1984 album Fistful of Metal (the day their youngest member, bassist Danny Lilker, turned 19) and was later covered by post-grunge band Creed on the soundtrack to the 1998 movie The Faculty, and also by Zwan on tour.
The song was also covered by Camp Freddy with Slash of Guns and Roses on guitar and Chester Bennington of Linkin Park on vocals.
Don Dokken, John Norum, Bob Kulick, Tim Bogert, Gregg Bissonette and David Glen Eisley performed the song – under the title 'Eighteen' – on the tribute album Humanary Stew: A Tribute To Alice Cooper.
The song featured as a 'b-side' track on the Big Country CD single "You Dreamer" in 1995.[4]
It was used in an episode of the 1999 TV show Freaks and Geeks, when Guidance Counsellor Mr. Rosso (Dave "Gruber" Allen) played an acoustic cover of the song to show the kids he knew what they were going through. The song is featured in Bill Couturié's 1987 documentary Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. At the end of the Sons Of Anarchy episode "Giving Back", a cover version by Scott Shriner & the Forest Rangers is played.