1979 AC/DC Rock Classic, Called 'Too Poppy' by Its Own Band- Def Leppard's Joe Elliott Called It the Best on the Album
Joe Elliott has heard a lot of awesome rock albums. As the frontman of Def Leppard - one of the biggest bands of the '80s - he's lived inside that world his entire adult life. So when he says something is the best song on one of the greatest rock records ever made, you listen.
What makes it fascinating is that the band who actually made that song completely disagreed with him.
"AC/DC couldn't stand 'Touch Too Much,'" Elliott recalled. "They thought it was too poppy. But I thought it was the best song on the album."
The album was Highway to Hell. The year was 1979. And the song AC/DC wanted to cut nearly didn't make it at all.
Their producer had to beg them to keep it.
It's a story most creative people will identify with immediately. You work hard on creating something that you hope will be amazing. But then the final result happens and you're convinced it doesn't belong. Someone standing slightly outside the situation can see clearly what you can't - that the thing you want to throw away might be the best thing you've made.
That's exactly what happened here.
Mutt Lange was not who you'd consider the usual choice for AC/DC. He'd built his name on polished, radio-friendly sounds like Foreigner- this was the opposite of everything the band stood for. AC/DC wasn't interested in being polished. They were a live band first and foremost, a recording band second. But Lange wasn't trying to change them. He just wanted to help them sound like the best version of themselves.
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What he didn't expect was having to fight to keep a song on the record.
"Touch Too Much" sat differently from everything else on Highway to Hell. Where the rest of the album hit hard and fast, this one slowed down and let itself breathe.
Too poppy, they said. Cut it.
Lange wouldn't budge. And Joe Elliott - taking in everything AC/DC did the way young musicians study the bands that they admire and shape them - didn't just think the song was good. He thought it was absolutely the best thing on the entire album.
When Someone Else Sees What You Can't
Looking back today, "Touch Too Much" was telling the world something the band wasn't really ready to hear.
The Bon Scott era was built on chaos and raw personality. Scott was completely irreplaceable - a frontman who made every song feel like a party about to spiral out of control. "Touch Too Much" had all of that energy, but there was something else deeper underneath. A hint of melody and a little more structure went a long way. A song that worked on the radio just as well as it did at full volume.
One album later, after Scott's death, AC/DC released "You Shook Me All Night Long" - built almost completely on the kind of hooks they'd just refused to use.
"Touch Too Much" was where that shift quietly began. Even if nobody wanted to admit it at the time.
A band that was at the absolute top of their game nearly deleted the evidence that they were growing. Their producer heard it. Joe Elliott heard it.
Sometimes the people closest to something are the last ones to see it clearly.
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This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 3:10 PM.