"Poison" | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Alice Cooper | ||||||||
from the album Trash | ||||||||
B-side | "Trash" | |||||||
Released | 5 September 1989 | |||||||
Format | ||||||||
Recorded | 1989 | |||||||
Genre | Glam metal, Hard rock | |||||||
Length | 4:28 | |||||||
Label | Epic | |||||||
Writer(s) | ||||||||
Producer(s) | Desmond Child | |||||||
Alice Cooper singles chronology | ||||||||
|
||||||||
|
"Poison" is a song by American rock singer-songwriter Alice Cooper. Written by Cooper, and co-written by Desmond Child and John McCurry, the song was released worldwide as a single in late-1989 from Cooper's eighteenth album, Trash (1989). The song was one of Cooper's biggest hit singles in the United States, peaking at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at number 2 in the UK Singles Chart, only being held off the top spot by the dance record, "Swing the Mood" by Jive Bunny & the Mastermixers. "Poison" is one of Alice Cooper's best known songs. It is ranked by Billboard as the "91st top song of 1989", while Ultimate Classic Rock ranked it as the "6th best Alice Cooper song", commenting "Poison sounds like a typical ’80s pop-metal number at times, but Cooper’s intensity brings it to a whole other level."
The song is available as downloadable content (as part of the Alice Cooper pack or as a single) for use in the music video game Rock Band, and a re-recorded version is also available as downloadable content for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.
There are two versions of the video to the song which shows Alice Cooper being chained to a bizarre mechanism and singing while a ghostly woman looms over him. The original video had to be censored for showings during the day, due to shots of model Rana Kennedy topless. The portions in question were redone with her wearing a corset to cover her breasts. The video is still often played on VH1 Classic's Metal Mania.
The Groove Coverage version of "Poison" comes in various remixes.
^shipments figures based on certification alone