This 1980s Single by Asia Was an Apology for “Dreadful Behavior”

In 1982, Asia released “Heat Of The Moment”. The song, their debut single, is part of their eponymous freshman record.

A No. 1 hit, “Heat Of The Moment” begins with, “I never meant to be so bad to you / One thing I said that I would never do / A look from you and I would fall from grace / And that would wipe the smile right from my face.”

The song was written by band members John Wetton and Geoff Downes. Although it remains one of Asia’s biggest hits, Wetton later reveals that when he wrote the lyrics to “Heat Of The Moment”, he had something much more personal in mind than just having a successful single.

“The lyrics are an abject apology for my dreadful behavior towards a particular woman (the woman I would eventually marry, but divorce 10 years later),” Wetton later reveals to Rediscover the 80s. “The chorus began its life as a 6/8 country song, but when Geoff and I started writing together, we moved the time signatures around, and ‘Heat of the Moment’ emerged. No one else particularly ‘got’ the song, and it was the last song to be recorded for the album.”

What John Wetton and Geoff Downes Say About Writing “Heat Of The Moment” for Asia

In a separate interview, Wetton shares more about what he was trying to convey in the lyrics of “Heat Of The Moment”.

“The whole song is just an apology,” Wetton tells Songfacts. “It’s just saying I f–ked up. I hold my hand out, and I got it wrong; I never meant it to be like that. I didn’t want it to be like that. And so I’m sorry.”

Downes also shares how “Heat Of The Moment” came to him, which is much different than how rock songs are usually created.

“John had a chorus part that was actually in a different time signature from the one that ended up on the recording,” Downes remembers. “It was like a country song. He just had the chorus part, and I had a verse part, as well. So, we just put the two together one afternoon. We wrote the middle bridge section the following day, and that was it.”

The song was really put to bed like that. John wrote all the lyrics, and the rest is history,” he adds. “It was actually the last song we wrote for the album, funny enough. And it became a big hit single.”

After “Heat Of The Moment”, Asia only had one more No. 1 hit, with “Don’t Cry”. That song came out in 1983.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns