I don’t have many associations with this song, apart from some vague memories of the rather odd video. Benatar plays a troubled teen who is kicked out of the house and winds up dancing with strangers in a bar. Then one day a fellow employee is roughed up by the sleazy manager and she comes to the girl’s defense by leading the rest of the employees in a line dance not unlike the one the zombies do in ‘Thriller.’

And you can see all of that for yourself by clicking the link below (a far less obnoxious form of YouTube fascism is the “embedding disabled” setting, which prevents me from showing the video here but at least leaves it up for the world to see and hear).

This song came up recently when I was talking about the near-blanket rule I have about songs with spoken-word parts. As in, I hate almost all of them. I’m thinking of the sort of thing you hear in Elvis Presley songs, where after the second chorus the singer feels the need to chit-chat: “You know, baby, every time I see your face I want to die…” You know the drill. It’s like somebody interrupted the song to read a Hallmark card.

But I guess there are some exceptions, like Benatar’s spoken-word intro to this song. I’m not saying it works in some great way, just that it doesn’t turn me off the song completely. Maybe that’s because it comes at the beginning.

The other things I associate with this song is the woefully under-appreciated movie 13 Going on 30, the best Big knockoff since Big. Jennifer Garner gives a wonderful performance in that film, including a slumber party singalong of ‘Love is a Battlefield.’ [Note: The film also contains a great ‘Thriller’ dance number, seen here, that ties this train of thought nicely back to the Benatar video I described above]