Kiss were always careful to put their best foot forward with the opening tracks of their 20 studio albums. Lead-off tracks such as “Strutter,” “Detroit Rock City” and “I Stole Your Love” are among the group’s most popular work, and quickly became staples of their live shows.
Sometimes it took a lot of work. “The hardest part for me in writing for an album is writing the first song, coming to grips with it thematically and finding out the direction for the album,” Paul Stanley explained in the band’s 2003 book Behind the Mask. “Not surprisingly, the first song written is the song that winds up as the first song on the album. It becomes the signature piece.”