"Billy Squiers' The Stroke is one of those songs that has sporadically appeared throughout my musical life. I can't quite place my finger on when I heard it first, but now that opening beat and riff is unmistakable, and it always gets my feet tapping when I hear it either on a playlist or on the TV. It also resurfaced in the public's mind when it was used in the film Blades Of Glory, and I've also found out that Eminem sampled it on one of his songs!

The song itself wasn't a massive hit this side of the pond; in fact, it didn't even break into the fabled top 40, languishing at number 52. Thankfully, the US of A liked it a lot more than we did, and it reached number 3 on the US Billboard Top Tracks and 17 on the US Billboard Hot 100. 

It was only a few years ago that I learnt the lyrics referred to the music business, not what I had originally thought. It turns out that apparently, I wasn't the only one with a mucky mind (I'll put it down to naivety!)

A superb song from an artist that stopped recording albums in 1998, but still appears to be intermittently active on the music scene today."