We are not going to take it

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• We're Not Going to Take It

Oh we're not gonna take it
No, we ain't gonna take it
Oh we're not gonna take it anymore

We've got the right to choose and
There ain't no way we'll lose it
This is our life, this is our song
We'll fight the powers that be just
Don't pick our destiny 'cause
You don't know us, you don't belong

Oh we're not gonna take it
No, we ain't gonna take it
Oh we're not gonna take it anymore

Oh you're so condescending
Your gall is never ending
We don't want nothin', not a thing from you
Your life is trite and jaded
Boring and confiscated
If that's your best, your best won't do

Oh
Oh
We're right/yeah
We're free/yeah
We'll fight/yeah
You'll see/yeah

Oh we're not gonna take it
No, we ain't gonna take it
Oh we're not gonna take it anymore
No way!

Oh
Oh
We're right/yeah
We're free/yeah
We'll fight/yeah
You'll see/yeah

We're not gonna take it
No, we ain't gonna take it
We're not gonna take it anymore

We're not gonna take it, no!
No, we ain't gonna take it
We're not gonna take it anymore

Just you try and make us
We're not gonna take it
Come on
No, we ain't gonna take it
You're all worthless and weak
We're not gonna take it anymore
Now drop and give me twenty
We're not gonna take it
Oh crinch pin
No, we ain't gonna take it
Oh you and your uniform
We're not gonna take it anymore

Lyrics licensed by LyricFind

“We’re Not Gonna Take It” is Twisted Sister’s signature song. Snider wrote the song’s hook three years prior to its release but ‘could never figure out how to write a verse for it’. Studying Mutt Lange’s work with Def Leppard on their 1983 album Pyromania helped inspire him on how to eventually finish the song.

It was the band’s most successful song in the US, peaking at #21 in September 1984. Its rebellion-meets-cartoon violence video, featuring a storyline similar to (and including an actor from) the 1978 film Animal House, was very popular on MTV that year.

The song scored its highest peak in New Zealand, reaching #2 there. In the UK, it was moderately successful, peaking at #58. The band had four other songs chart higher there in the mid-80s.

In 1985, the PMRC included “We’re Not Gonna Take It” on their infamous ‘filthy fifteen’, citing it for ‘violence’, as part of their campaign to get records they found offensive labeled with a parental advisory sticker. Snider testified in court against them, pointing out, “there is absolutely no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song”.

Due to its similarity to the Christmas song “O Come All Ye Faithful”, with Snider later stating, “turns out I stole the chord progression”, the band released “O Come All Ye Faithful” on their 2006 holiday album A Twisted Christmas with the music of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” performed behind the lyrics.

“We’re Not Gonna Take It” continues to be a popular choice for sporting events, protests and political rallies, including Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – which the band privately asked them to stop doing. In 2009, it was certified Gold for selling over half-million digital downloads.

Their next single reached #68 and the lead single of their next album peaked at #53 in the US, so the band is labeled a one hit wonder there. One example is in 2013 when VH1 named the band the #20 greatest one hit wonder.

Songfacts®:

• This is the mighty anthem for anyone lashing out at an authority figure and ready to put up a fight. The song is short on specifics, so it can apply to just about any situation where "we" are battling "the powers that be." This all-purpose approach was intentional and gave the song a timeless quality.

  In our interview with Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, he explained: "With 'We're Not Gonna Take It,' whether I was singing about my parents, my teachers, my bosses, my peers, people around me, I felt it was important not to define it by actually naming names and singing, 'Dad, you're so trite and jaded, I hate my teachers, too.' And thus, the song has had a life in sporting events, at political rallies, at protests, pretty much anybody who's not taking something from somebody else, they're going to break into 'We're Not Gonna Take It' all over the world."

• Twisted Sister wrote this song to the basic tune of "O Come All Ye Faithful." On their 2006 album A Twisted Christmas, they did a version of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" with using the traditional lyrics but set to the music of "We're Not Gonna Take It."

• Dee Snider started writing this song in 1980, two years before Twisted Sister released their first album, Under the Blade. He had the hook, but couldn't come up with a verse melody. After Def Leppard released their Pyromania album in 1983, Snider came up with a plan. "In studying some of Mutt Lange's work with Def Leppard, I saw that a number of their songs were using variations on the chorus as a verse," he told us. "That gave me the information I needed to come up with the rest of 'We're Not Gonna Take It.'"

  The song was finished in time for Twisted Sister's third album, Stay Hungry, which was their breakthrough, taking them out of the clubs and into arenas. "We're Not Gonna Take It," released as the first single, led the charge thanks to the innovative video with cartoonish violence featuring a young kid that turns into Snider, telling his father he's "Not gonna take it!"

  With frequent airplay on the emerging MTV, Twisted Sister was exposed to a large and more youthful audience, and soon they were all over the media. What many didn't realize was that band had been around for over a decade by this time, and had already built a loyal following in the New York area. On the Stay Hungry tour, Snider would often commend the fans that were there when you couldn't catch them on MTV.

• The video features Mark Metcalf, who played Neidermeyer in the 1978 movie Animal House. Before the song starts, Metcalf comes into the kid's room and berates him, ending his tirade by asking the now-famous phrase, "what are you want do with your life"? (answer: "I wanna rock!").

  The dialogue was written by the video's director Marty Callner, who had directed several HBO specials but never a music video. He said in the book I Want My MTV: "Atlantic Records had signed a Long Island band they didn't know what to do with, Twisted Sister. They had a song, 'We're Not Gonna Take It,' and because of my comedy and music background, they seemed like the perfect hybrid for me."

  Mark Metcalf ended by starring in the next Twisted Sister video as well: "I Wanna Rock." He was living in Pittsburgh and only took the gig because he got a free flight to LA where he had a girlfriend. Snider, a huge Animal House fan, picked him up at the airport and they instantly bonded.

• In this song, not only are we not gonna take it, but we're going to turn the tables and let our oppressor know that his life is not only "trite and jaded" but also "boring and confiscated." Going on the attack was a Twisted Sister specialty: At their concerts, Dee Snider would go on tirades about various people and institutions, and would sometimes berate audience members who were killing the vibe.

• Eddie Ojeda and Jay Jay French shared guitar duties with Twisted Sister. Ojeda played the solo on this one.

• In 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), a group led by Tipper Gore and the wives of other political insiders (Gore was married to Senator Al Gore), pushed to get warning labels attached to albums with explicit lyrics. They included this song in their list of 15 they deemed most offensive, citing it for violence.

  On September 19 of that year, Tipper Gore and other members of the group testified at a Senate hearing on the matter. Dee Snider testified in opposition alongside John Denver and Frank Zappa. At the hearing, Snider said: "You will note from the lyrics before you that there is absolutely no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song. Now, it strikes me that the PMRC may have confused our video presentation for this song with the song with the lyrics, with the meaning of the lyrics.

  It is no secret that the videos often depict story lines completely unrelated to the lyrics of the song they accompany. The video 'We're Not Gonna Take It' was simply meant to be a cartoon with human actors playing variations on the Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote theme, Each stunt was selected from my extensive personal collection of cartoons.

  You will note when you watch the entire video that after each catastrophe our villain suffers through, in the next sequence he reappears unharmed by any previous attack, no worse for the wear.

  By the way, I am very pleased to note that the United Way of America has been granted a request to use portions of our 'We're Not Gonna Take It' video in a program they are producing on the subject of the changing American family. They asked for it because of its 'light-hearted way of talking about communicating with teenagers.' It is gratifying that an organization as respected as the United Way of America appreciates where we are coming from."

• Mitt Romney's running mate Paul Ryan used the song during the 2012 Republican Party's presidential campaign, causing Dee Snider to air his disapproval. "I emphatically denounce Paul Ryan's use of my band Twisted Sister's song 'We're Not Gonna Take It' in any capacity," said the Twisted Sister frontman in a statement. "There is almost nothing he stands for that I agree with except the use of the [workout program] P90X."

  Snider, however, had no problem with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump using the tune as the "exit song" during the politician's 2015 campaign stops. "Donald Trump is a good friend and a great guy, and I support him turning the political system on its head," he told TMZ.com. "The song 'We're Not Gonna Take It' is a song about rebellion, and there's nothing more rebellious than what Donald Trump is doing right now. Although [Democratic presidential candidate] Bernie Sanders can use it as well; he's turning things upside down too."

• Dee Snider recorded an acoustic version of this song with piano backing in 2016 to help out Criss Angel's Heal Every Life Possible (HELP) organization, which fights childhood cancer. Angel directed the video, which was shot in the desert outside of Las Vegas. In the clip, real cancer patients are shown shaving their heads.

  Angel and Snider are both from Long Island and have known each other since the '90s. Snider and his record company made the song available to HELP at no cost.

• This song has been used in a number of movies. Among them:

  Iron Eagle (1986)
  Corky Romano (2001)
  On the Line (2001)
  Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (2015)
  The Emoji Movie (2017)
  Ready Player One (2018)

• In a strange twist, teachers in Oklahoma appropriated this song when they went on strike in 2018 over poor salaries and a lack of school funding. Teachers are commonly the target of the song, but when they marched on the state capitol, music teachers organized a performance that led to the song becoming their anthem. Many of those teachers were students when the song was released.

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