Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)
1982 song performed by Thin Lizzy

"Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)" is a song by the Irish rock band Thin Lizzy, written by guitarist Scott Gorham and bassist/vocalist Phil Lynott, and released as a single in 1982. It was the only single to be released from their 1981 album Renegade.
Single release
The opening track on Side 2 of Renegade, "Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)" was released as a single in February 1982, over three months after the album which had been released the previous November. Vertigo Records refused to finance a promotional video for the song, which contributed to a relatively poor chart placing compared to past singles. In the UK, "Hollywood" reached no. 53, which apart from the previous single, "Trouble Boys", which also reached no. 53, was the lowest chart placing for a Thin Lizzy single in the UK since "Wild One" failed to chart in 1975. In Ireland, the single did not chart at all, again the worst performance since the mid-1970s. It did, however, reach no. 24 on the US Mainstream Rock chart.
The public source identifies “Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)” as 1982 song performed by Thin Lizzy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hollywood, Down and Your.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q17010424. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1981 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)” 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.