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In 1976, Kiss opened their Destroyer album with “Detroit Rock City.” Paired with the ballad “Beth” as its B-side, the riff-heavy song had an unusual chart history. After producers flipped the order of the songs on the single, “Beth” peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 on Dec 4. 1976, with “Detroit Rock City” as the B-side.
Still, the opening track became one of Kiss’s signature songs and an arena rock anthem.
In April 2026, Ultimate Classic Rock ranked “Detroit Rock City” as one of the top 100 rock songs of all time. The song was ranked on a list that included “Stairway to Heaven” and “Hotel California.”
Describing the Destroyer album as Kiss’s “most polished and accomplished studio LP,” the outlet added, “Its opening song, ‘Detroit Rock City,’ is a tribute to fans.”
Detroit was important to Kiss
“Detroit Rock City” was written by Kiss frontman Paul Stanley and producer Bob Ezrin. In an interview with M Live, Stanley revealed that Detroit embraced Kiss before anyone else did, so he wanted to write a song in tribute to the city.
“Detroit, for me, has always been an incredible city with a great allure and a great history,” Stanley told Ultimate Classic Rock in 2021. “It’s a city that really embraces rock ‘n’ roll. And we were a headliner in Detroit before we were anywhere close to that in other parts of the country.”
But the song also became a tribute to a fan who died on the way to a Kiss show.
“It started off as just a song to sing the praises of this rock ‘n’ roll city,” Stanley shared. “Bob Ezrin, at the time, really wanted us to push ourselves in terms of our lyrics and perspective. And I remembered that a fan going to our show in Charlotte got killed, was hit by a car, and I just remember thinking about the idea of somebody traveling to see something that celebrates life, and in the process losing their life. So the song became about somebody traveling to a Kiss concert and not making it. It was still championing Detroit, but also memorialized somebody who didn’t get there.”
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When the hard-rocking song was released as a single, the pairing with the piano-based love ballad “Beth” threw off some fans.
“When it first came out, some people were really happy with ‘Detroit Rock City’ and some people were upset with ‘Beth,’” Kiss bassist Gene Simmons told Music Radar. “They were released as the single, ‘Detroit Rock City’ as the A-side, but the B-side, ‘Beth,’ became the number one record.”
In 2019, Classic Rock magazine ranked “Detroit Rock City” as the greatest-ever Kiss song. Calling it a “timeless ode to the power of rock’n’roll,” the outlet added, “It was in Detroit, not their hometown of New York, that Kiss found their biggest audience in their early days. In return, the band gave the Motor City its own rock anthem. No Kiss show is complete without it.“
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