‘Stone Cold’ is a song by British-American rock band Rainbow. It was released as a single in 1982 from their album Straight Between the Eyes. The song reached the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 40 on June 19, 1982, and spent 12 weeks on the chart. This was the band's only top 40 song in the United States. It also topped the Billboard Top Rock Tracks on June 5, 1982.
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.
Label – Polydor
Songwriters – Ritchie Blackmore, Joe Lynn Turner, Roger Glover
Producer – Roger Glover
SONG LYRICS
Every night I have the same old dream'Bout you and me and what's in between
So many changes, so many lies
Try to run, try to hide
From everything that I feel inside
But I can't escape you or your frozen eyes
Searching in the darkness
Fading out of sight
Love was here and gone like a thief in the night
Stone cold
And I thought I knew you so well
Stone cold
Can't break away from your spell
Another dark and empty night
If I was wrong, I wanna make it right
But you are so distant, so far away
Your words like ice fall on the ground
Breaking the silence without a sound
Oh, familiar strangers with nothing to say
Searching in the darkness
Fading out of sight
Love was here and gone like a thief in the night
Stone cold
And I thought I knew you so well
Stone cold, yeah
I can't break away from your spell
You leave me stone cold
Searching in the darkness
Fading out of sight
Love was here and gone like a thief in the night
Stone cold
And I thought I knew you so well
Stone cold, yeah
I can't break away from your spell
Stone cold, baby
I thought I knew you so well
You're stone cold, ice cold
Can't break away from your spell
You put me in the deep freeze (Stone cold)
Oh, baby, don't you leave me (And I thought I knew you so well)
Stone cold, you're leaving me cold
(Can't break away from your spell)
Stone cold
I thought I knew you so well
Stone cold
Can't break away from your spell
Stone cold
And I thought I knew you so well
Stone cold
Can't break away from your spell
Stone cold
And I thought I knew you so well
Stone cold