By the time she was working on her sophomore album Crimes of Passion, Pat Benatar was already a rising star. She and her musical partner/guitarist Neil Giraldo had created a stir with her debut In The Heat of The Night, which was released in August 1979 and would be certified Platinum by the end of the following year. The hot-rocking “Heartbreaker,” one of two Top 30 singles on the album, showed off her operatic voice and his revved-up guitar playing. Soon after, they needed that all-important follow-up.
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The musical power couple and their tight-knot band released Crimes of Passion in August 1980. It was filled with hits: “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” (No. 9), “Treat Me Right” (No. 18), and the Young Rascals cover “You Better Run” (No. 42)—the latter becoming the second video ever aired on MTV on August 1, 1981. Crimes of Passion hit No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart and within four years would become her biggest-selling ever with certified sales of 4 million copies.
One song stood out from the pack because it took a dark and intense turn—”Hell Is for Children.” A song about the horror and heartbreak of child abuse and neglect, it was never released as a single but garnered substantial radio airplay at the time, and it has since become one of Benatar’s top five most played songs in concert, having first been debuted at a show in New York’s Central Park on July 25, 1980.
Giraldo has explained that “Hell Is for Children” was inspired by a series of New York Times articles about child abuse that Benatar read and was deeply moved by. It inspired her initial lyrics, which were supplemented by bassist Roger Capps.
“I got a hold of it and I finished writing the melody and I worked on the chorus, and I did the outro section to build it up, because I wanted the whole song to be very sad as the beginning,” Giraldo told Songfacts. “I wanted to make it intense so you could really feel the pain of what the song was about. So by the time it ended, you’ve got to be exhausted. And that was the point. ‘Hell is for hell,’ like a very powerful moment.”
The song retains a freshness and power to it because it reflected Benatar’s raw feelings of revelation about the topic. She once explained to Portfolio Weekly, “I came from a really small town on Long Island and I had no idea that this existed, not in the little gingerbread place I came from. I was stunned. It affected me so much. I was moved by the articles. Whenever that would happen I would write.”
Benatar wanted Giraldo to write music that reflected the pain of the children she had read about and who were being depicted in the song. The tune balances slow, melancholy verses and tense mid-tempo choruses as Benatar expands upon the idea that love and pain become one and the same in the eyes of a wounded child. The latter half of the song kicks into angry double time with high velocity guitar and the singer screaming hell is for hell to emphasize the pained anguish beneath the children’s sorrow expressed in the song.
It still makes a powerful impression.
“Hell Is for Children” did have an unintended effect. “Everybody thought that it was real,” Giraldo revealed to Songfacts. “They thought that Patricia was abused as a child, which wasn’t the case. She had a great upbringing. You couldn’t get more Happy Days-like than her. She had the perfect Happy Days life. There was other abuse happening in my family, but it was a different type of thing, more verbal, but not physical like the song depicts.”
After releasing the song, Benatar and Giraldo made sure royalties went to the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation of San Diego County, now known as Promises2Kids in San Diego. They have played shows to benefit the organization as well.
Benatar told Nights with Alice Cooper that “Hell Is for Children” is “my proudest achievement. It was created with a pure heart out of love and compassion for life’s dearest beings, children. … I play it every performance as a gesture of faith and solidarity.” Benatar and Giraldo married in 1982 and have two adult daughters, Hana and Haley.
“I’m glad it turned out the way it did,” Giraldo told Songfacts of the track. “It’s one of my favorite songs that we wrote, and it really has a very powerful effect on people. And it’s great to play, it’s great to sing, great to hear, great to feel.”
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