Back in Black
1980 studio album by AC/DC
Back in Black is the seventh studio album by Australian rock band AC/DC, released on 25 July 1980, by Albert Productions and Atlantic Records. It was the band's first album to feature Brian Johnson as lead singer, following the death of their previous vocalist Bon Scott. After the commercial breakthrough of their 1979 album Highway to Hell, AC/DC was planning to record a follow-up, but in February 1980, Scott died from alcohol poisoning after a night out in London. The remaining members of the group considered disbanding, but ultimately chose to continue on and recruited Johnson, who had previously been the vocalist for Geordie.
The album was composed by Johnson and brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, and recorded over seven weeks in the Bahamas from April to May 1980 with producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who had also produced Highway to Hell. Following its completion, the group mixed Back in Black at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. The album's all-black cover was designed as a "sign of mourning" for Scott.
Back in Black was an unprecedented commercial and critical success. It has sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide, making it the second-best-selling album in music history. AC/DC supported the album with a yearlong world tour that cemented them among the most popular music acts of the early 1980s.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q155715. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Back in Black” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.