Night Ranger's 'Sister Christian': "It'll Outlive All Of Us" [Highlight From Episode 300]

Tim Durling, author of "Sing Me Away: The Night Ranger Album Review", on the success of Night Ranger's hit single "Sister Christian". 

Listen to Episode 300: Night Ranger's Discography Explored: Hits And Hidden Gems

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on
Rock sing Me Away the Night Ranger album review. It's
the latest book from our guest Tim Durling. That debut
album sent them up nicely for the follow up. They
had the attention of radio, they had the attention of MTV.
The result the band's best selling album, Midnight Madness October
eighty three, came out over one million copies, sold three singles,

(00:21):
You Can Still Rock in America, Sister Christian and when
You Close your Eyes.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think some of the songs they were working on
before Dawn Patrol. I've been told that Sister Christian was
actually written for sessions that produced the Dawn Patrol album,
but it was saved for the second album and obviously
was That's a career song for them, right, That's the
song that gave them a name, but actually went all
the way to number one up here in Canada. Night
Ranger were never a band that toured Canada all that much,

(00:47):
but for that particular time, the Midnight Madness album went
gold and they did have a number one song. But yeah,
that was their calling card song to this day. More
it's a unique situation where you have a band, and
where the success of one song sort of outsizes the
success of the entire band. In other words, there's a
lot more people that know Sister Christian than would no, say,

(01:10):
the individual players and night Ranger and maybe even who
does the song. Sure, it's a little bit like you know,
you could say, mister Big is like that, Extreme is
like that. It's not like Journey, where you have a
dozen or so radio staples that you could never beat
label them one hit wonder, it's like, well, which one
are you talking about? Even though night Ranger had six

(01:32):
top forty singles. Sister Christian it's unique, it's got a
unique title, it's got a unique cook everything about it is.
It's not a cookie cutter power ballad by any stretch
of the imagination. And it's remained in the public eye
and it's a song that will outlive all of us. Now.
I happen to think that Night Ranger had in their

(01:53):
arsenal of songs as many radio staples as Journey or Foreigner.
I think that they should have been They did all right,
I think they should have done better. I just think
that they had the capability and not the capability they
did deliver songs that should have been radio staples and
that we should all be sick of hearing. But for
whatever reason, it just didn't. It didn't exactly happen that way.

(02:16):
They sold a lot of albums, but it's always easy
to blame record labels because they're an easy target. But
MCA weren't exactly a hard rock label. Now, maybe they
had a little bit more savvy than say an M.
I always pick on them when I talk about Y
and T not becoming superstars, but I know for a time,
Night Ranger were MTV darlings. So there was probably a

(02:37):
period between like eighty three and eighty six where they
played Night Ranger a ton that helped. You know, they
did well on the road. They became a headline act
during that time, but they never stayed there long enough
to the point where they can go out now and
headline big places. They can go out now and headline
large sized theaters, you know, places like that. They can

(02:57):
do very very well as special guests on a bigger
tour and you and often cases blow the headliners off
the stage. But yeah, they're just one of those bands
that I've always been a huge fan of, and to
my knowledge, there's never been a book on them,