5 Rock Songs That Redefine Love Anthems

There's nothing as cathartic as a pounding rock love anthem to express your inner feelings. Sometimes, a pounding love anthem cries against loneliness or pleads with someone who doesn't love you in return. Ballads may be nice for the sweet and sad times, but having the cathartic medium of rock music helps us express the frustrating feelings with the force they deserve. Forget about rock love songs that aged horribly; when all the components come together in a perfectly-balanced rock love anthem, it rewrites the rules of the game.

How do you identify a rock song into a love anthem powerful enough to redefine the format? In our opinion, it's a tune that questions or explains the transformative power of love and does so without holding back. There are power chords, of course, and lyrics that challenge the notion of what love can be. And they have to invite listeners to sing and feel along. If you can belt while questioning the need for connection like Heart's "What About Love?" or growl while defending the battle for keeping it once you find it like Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield," then you've found a love anthem for the ages.

Of all the rock songs that profess and pine about the power of love, we think these five are genre-establishing creations that plant a flag in the landscape of passion, romance, and loneliness. If you've ever felt the full force of rock music and love coincide, raise a fist, and dive in.

Bon Jovi let loose a rip roaring riot of a love anthem when the band dropped "Livin' on a Prayer" in 1986. We all knew there was something different about this scorcher from the moment we heard Richie Sambora's guitar passing through that eerie human vocal filter. And when it finally reached that ultra-singable chorus that turned into an iconic declaration of devotion, the fabric of musical reality changed for good. It soared to No. 1 and made the band a true rock force.

The story of Tommy and Gina resonated with anyone who's ever given everything they had for the sake of love, and anyone who ever wished they had such a fiery connection. This isn't one of those chipper romance tunes that reaffirm the saccharine-sweetness of love. This is the love anthem that says that even when things get down and dirty and you have nothing left but each other, you're not in a place to give up; actually "halfway there ... living on a prayer." It cleverly reframes the notion that if you give up when times get tough, you actually miss out on the incredible stuff that's coming down the line.

You don't have to be Tommy or Gina to feel the anthemic power of this mighty song. You just have to imagine how much these two characters love each other — willing to do whatever it takes to make things work out. Now that's a love anthem.

It doesn't get more anthemic than the Wilson sisters roaring into the void while addressing a skittish potential partner, "What about love? Don't you want someone to care about you?" In the context of the song, it's clear that Ann and Nancy have someone particular in mind, someone who can't overcome their reluctance and give in to the idea of actual love. But philosophically, it seems like they're also questioning their own need for love, which makes us question our need for love, too. It's like this 80s rock band is reminding us that there's more to life than chasing paper and courting clout.

This savvy slice of power pop gave the band a glossy commercial upgrade, keeping Nancy's muscular guitar work and Ann's cannon vocals squarely in the spotlight. But the band now had big hair and spangled costumes that looked more glam than their previous image. It was a dramatic shift that gave the band a more commercial profile and led to a massive comeback.

There was also a new element in the toolbox: vulnerability, an evolution of the band's empowerment songs from the '70s like "Barracuda" and "Crazy on You." New emotional textures had entered the picture, giving the band space to grow and adapt their sound for an expanded audience. It also gave fans a catchy belter of a tune to reference when pleading in a moment of unrequited love. The fact that it went top 10 didn't hurt matters.

The screechy tones of Axl Rose may be an unlikely vehicle for delivering what is essentially a declaration of love set to Slash's ultra feedback-laden guitar work, but Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" actually benefits from the raw emotion. The opening arpeggios are by now one of the quintessential rock riffs of the '80s, if not the whole of modern music, a high energy dot-to-dot that sets the mode for a more upbeat version of the band's gritty formula for musical alchemy. And the chorus is a sing-along standard that has rung out for decades, making this a sunny anthem that simply celebrates love — and questions what comes next.

Though the lyrics are about Axl Rose's girlfriend at the time, Erin Everly, the "child" element and notable lack of lecherous content make it easy to mistake the lyrics for a celebration of a father's love for his daughter. That sort of inclusiveness led to the band sanctioning an illustrated picture book for children using the lyrics as text in 2020. How many love anthems can say that?

The song became the band's only No. 1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1988. But streamers love it as much as original Guns N' Roses fans did; the song zipped past one billion Spotify streams in 2021 and was the first '80s video to hit one billion views on YouTube. This one is an anthem that spans ages without losing its potency.

As love anthems about loneliness go, "Somebody to Love" is about as peppy as it gets. After describing how fruitless his search for deeper connection has been, Freddie Mercury hits the high notes and sends out the cosmic question, "Can anybody find me somebody to love?" It slices into the heart with a familiar unfulfilled longing. Most likely, you're also dancing to this searing tune, caught up in the up-tempo shuffle beat, and singing along with the high melodic verses.

If it sounds a bit different from the band's other works, it may be because the band was inspired by gospel tones and the sounds of Aretha Franklin. Frontman Freddy Mercury was enamored of her and wanted the song to feel like a tribute to her work. Digging deep like that helped Mercury conjure a vocal performance that dips and dives, capturing the full range of hope and disappointment love often presents.

When creating "Somebody to Love," Mercury challenged him to top "Bohemian Rhapsody," which is sometimes considered to a '70s song that's painfully overrated. He was convinced he could do better, and the result was this pulse-pounding anthem that every lovelorn soul who's ever wondered when their soulmate will arrive can relate to. It may have only reached No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 — compared to "Bohemian Rhapsody" reaching No. 2 — but it resonates on a much profounder level.

In the 80s, you could always count on Pat Benatar to offer up a slice of searing truth in the form of a banging rock song. Her classic "Love is a Battlefield" is a prime example of how she evolved her powerful sound by including new textures while creating a rally cry for anybody who's ever fought for love. When Benatar reaches the chorus and belts "We are strong, heartache to heartache we stand," it becomes an admission of a difficult truth. Nobody comes into a new relationship without scars, and if it's worth the fight, you may pick up a few more.

One of two new tracks added to Benatar's "Live from Earth" released in 1983, the song became her first top 5 single and gave her a more expansive sound that she'd use throughout the rest of the '80s. Benatar and her musical in life partner, Neil Giraldo, actually reworked the demo created by songwriters Holly Knight and Mike Chapman to add rhythmic layers and more atmospheric version that the record label didn't exactly love at first. The whistling, the tempo, the shuffling drum machine track — it all cried "R&B" to the label. Thankfully, Giraldo persuaded them to release it as-is.

Thanks to the post-apocalyptic dance hall look of the music video, "Love is a Battlefield" expanded Pat Benatar's historical tie-in to MTV. The iconic dance sequence provided unforgettable visuals that showed a whole generation how to fight for love.