Pat Benatar

The siren-voiced Pat Benatar leapt onto the music scene in the late '70s, when hard rock was still pretty much a boys' club. She made a strong impression. On in-your-face hits like "Heartbreaker" and "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", Benatar issued challenges to bad-boy lovers, and her tough-gal image was bolstered through dramatic videos on MTV for a string of hits including "We Belong" and the powerful "Love is a Battlefield". But Benatar was always much more than an image, as the many strong compositions in her songbook attest.

• rock
• pop