The Number of the Beast (song)
original song written and composed by Steve Harris
"The Number of the Beast" is a song by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It is Iron Maiden's seventh single release, and the second single from their 1982 studio album of the same name. It was reissued in 2005 and also prior to that in 1990 in The First Ten Years box set on CD and 12" vinyl, in which it was combined with the previous single, "Run to the Hills".
Upon release in 1982, the song caused controversy in the United States where its subject matter caused outrage amongst religious groups. In spite of this, it remains one of the band's more popular songs, reaching No. 18 in the UK Singles Chart on its original release, and No. 3 on two successive occasions in 1990 and 2005. It has been performed on almost all of their concert tours. Additionally, the song has been covered numerous times and has appeared in several video games and films.
Writing and recording
According to the song's writer, bassist and band-founder Steve Harris, it was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching the film Damien: Omen II late at night, in addition to the poem "Tam o' Shanter" by Robert Burns.
“The Number of the Beast (song)” enters the record as original song written and composed by Steve Harris. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Number, Beast and song can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The Number of the Beast (song)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Number, Beast and song provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q780895. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 2005 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Number of the Beast (song)” 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.