| I Wanna Rock | |
| Cover: | I Wanna Rock.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Twisted Sister |
| Album: | Stay Hungry |
| Released: | October 1984[1] |
| Genre: |
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| Length: | 3:00 |
| Label: | Atlantic |
| Producer: | Tom Werman |
| Prev Title: | We're Not Gonna Take It |
| Prev Year: | 1984 |
| Next Title: | The Price |
| Next Year: | 1984 |
"I Wanna Rock" is a song written and composed by Dee Snider and performed by his band Twisted Sister. It was released on the 1984 album Stay Hungry.
Cash Box called the song "an exercise in hard rocking" that doesn't break new ground but "does what it does well."[6] Billboard said that Twisted Sister "strip down their stadium-sized sound to a minimum of power chords and slogan lyrics."[7]
In 2009, "I Wanna Rock" was named the 17th-Greatest Hard Rock Song by VH1.[8]
Like the earlier "We're Not Gonna Take It", the video features actor Mark Metcalf, best known as the abusive ROTC leader Douglas C. Neidermeyer from the movie National Lampoon's Animal House.
In the video, he plays a teacher with a similar personality to Neidermeyer, who harasses a student for drawing the Twisted Sister logo on one of his textbooks. He chastises the student by shouting, "What kind of a man desecrates a defenseless textbook?! I've got a good mind to slap your fat face!", which echoes a line from Animal House ("What kind of man hits a defenseless animal [a misbehaving horse]? I've got a good mind to smash your fat face in!").
Metcalf's character reprises his question from the "We're Not Gonna Take It" video, "What do you want to do with your life?!" This provides a lead-in for the track, as the student answers with the first line of the song, "I wanna rock!", after which he and four of his classmates are instantly transformed into Twisted Sister's five members.
The abusive teacher's repeated attempts to stop his rock-loving students not only fail; they also backfire on him. He crawls into the school principal's office, only to be confronted by the principal, played by Stephen Furst, who played Kent "Flounder" Dorfman in Animal House, opposite Metcalf. Furst's character, who suddenly approves Twisted Sister and its music, reprises one of his lines from the movie, "Oh boy, is this great!", before he sprays water from a seltzer bottle at the teacher, who collapses in defeat.
"Goofy Goober Rock", a cover of the song with modified lyrics, was performed in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) by voice actor Jim Wise and musician Tom Rothrock. Dee Snider explained the experience of licensing the song for SpongeBob by saying, "Are you kidding me? This is my music. This is my art. How much? They paid me a lot of money. It's called Goofy Goober Rock. God bless 'SpongeBob SquarePants.'"[9] The song was released on the album The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – Music from the Movie and More.... Nerdist ranked "Goofy Goober Rock" as the fourth-best song from the SpongeBob series.[10]
| Chart (1984) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Argentina[11] | 4 |
| Australia (Kent Music Report)[12] | 43 |
| South Africa (Springbok Radio)[13] | 3 |
. David Kent (historian) . 1993 . Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 . illustrated . Australian Chart Book . . 19 . 0-646-11917-6.