LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD
Writers: Holly Knight/ Mike Chapman
We are young
Heartache to heartache we stand
No promises no demands
Love is battlefield
We are strong
No one can tell us we’re wrong
Searching our hearts for so long
Both of us knowing
Love is battlefield
You’re begging me go
then making me stay
why do you hurt me so bad
It would help me to know
do I stand in your way
or am I the best thing you’ve had
Believe me believe me I can’t tell you why
but I’m trapped by your love and I’m chained to your side
We are young
Heartache to heartache we stand
No promises no demands
Love is battlefield
We are strong
No one can tell us we’re wrong
Searching our hearts for so long
Both of us knowing
Love is battlefield
And when I’m losing control
will you turn me away
or touch me deep inside
And when all this gets old
will it still feel the same
there’s no way this will die
But if we get much closer
I could lose control
and if your heart surrenders you’ll need to me to hold
We are young
Heartache to heartache we stand
No promises no demands
Love is battlefield
We are strong
No one can tell us we’re wrong
Searching our hearts for so long
Both of us knowing
Love is battlefield
1. LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD
‘I had just moved to Los Angeles to pursue a songwriting career after leaving my band Spider. We had recorded two records on Dreamland Records, which was Mike Chapman’s label, and I was worried he was going to be upset that I was leaving the band. But he encouraged me to move out to LA, and start taking my career as a songwriter more seriously. The first day I went over to Mike’s house to write, the phone rang and it was Pat Benatar who had worked with Mike before. She asked him to write her a song for her next record, Live From Earth (a live record). She wanted a new hit song on the album to help sell it. Mike told her he had gotten together that day with a writer, Holly Knight, whom he had signed to his publishing company, so he told her we would spend the day writing for her. Call it a fortuitous phone call, or destiny, either way it was day one for me and I was off and running. So, that very day we wrote the entire ‘Love Is A Battlefield’, with the exception of one line. One single teeny tiny line in the chorus that we weren’t happy with, and we spent two weeks writing line after line before we hit the one we loved, ‘No promises, no demands‘. I remember those days as hilarious but simple times, flying paper airplanes across Mike’s swimming pool while we wrote. I would think of a line, write it on the paper airplane and shoot it across the pool to him on the other side, and vica versa. It’s true that when we first heard Neil Geraldo’s production of it for the first time we were surprised, it had so many synthesizers, and bells and whistles on it, and the tempo was much faster, we weren’t even sure we liked it….The funny thing is, they know it and even wrote about it on their greatest hits package. But Pat’s voice was unbelievably brilliant. It became a huge hit for her, and we quickly learned to love their recording of it. Oddly enough the whistling on the record is one of the few production features from the demo that they kept besides the song itself. Let me just reiterate how brilliant I think Pat is. She is one of a kind and no one to this day has come along to rival her sound. She inspired so many women that wanted to be ballsy, yet sophisticated singers. Every female rock singer wants to be her. And Neil, her husband and guitarist is her Rock Of Gibraltar. I truly love those guys. Last year I recorded a new version of Love Is A Battlefield with my personal project, Story of O. I’ve been asked many times by Film and TV music supervisors to record ‘unrecognizable versions’ of my recognizable hits, and this one had to be dark and apocalyptic. It features a talented young singer named Sara Skinner, and was used to promote a new show, Deliverance Creek. You can find it on You Tube. It is absolutely in my top ten list of favorite tunes that I wrote. I hear it somewhere everywhere at least two or three times a week to this day’. – HK
- Won a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance (Pat Benatar)
- Featured in the finale episode, Season 2 of Stranger Things
- Featured in Season 1 Episode 8 of (the reboot) of Dynasty
- Featured in the movie, Thirteen Going On Thirty, starring Jennifer Gardner. (An entire scene was devoted to the song, with Jennifer singing along to Pat’s video during a slumber party)
- Featured in Family Guy Season Two, Episode: ‘Ike’s Wee Wee’
- Featured in South Park – Season Seven, Episode: ‘Red Man’s Greed’
- Featured on Glee -Season Five , Episode: Tested
- Has been on every single Greatest Hits package of Pat Benatar’s (Greatest Hits, All Fired Up, Synchronistic Wanderings, Best Shots), and every tour that Pat has done. It is her highest charting single.
- Pat Benatar has sold in excess of 12,500,000 singles and records
- Was licensed for the movie Weird Science
- Has been sung more times on American Idol, The Spelling Bee and The Voice, than I can remember, including the finale show of Season One with Cee Lo Green performing it with one of the final contestants as well as Season Three 2012
- Featured in the movie, The Other Woman (2014)
- Featured in the trailer of Deliverance Creek by Story of O/Sarah Skinner
