Rosanna

Paich wrote it. The single came out on March 31, 1982 in the US with "It's a Feeling" on the B-side, at 5:31 on the album and 3:59 as the single edit. It was recorded in 1981 at Sunset Sound and Record One; the basic rhythm track took a day and Lukather's guitar solo one take, and he called the last instrumental section a spontaneous jam. Engineer Al Schmitt told Mix it was the first track cut for the album, on the second take, ending with an improvised piano solo. Lukather and Kimball share the lead; Kimball sings the choruses and Lukather the verses' start. The horns were arranged by Jerry Hey, with Tom Scott and Jim Horn on saxophones.

Jeff Porcaro's half-time shuffle, the Rosanna shuffle, combines the Purdie shuffle, the groove of John Bonham's "Fool in the Rain" and a Bo Diddley beat, and he cited Steely Dan's "Home at Last". A 2024 arXiv paper by Esa Rasanen and colleagues found it swings more strongly than typical for its genre and drifts in tempo. The keyboard solos were built by Paich and Steve Porcaro from several instruments. On who inspired the lyric, accounts differ: Paich told Songfacts it was three girls he knew rolled into one and later a high school sweetheart, others have named different people, and Kimball denied the popular attribution.

It reached 2 in the US for five weeks, behind "Don't You Want Me" and "Eye of the Tiger", 12 in the UK and 2 in Norway, and is double platinum in the US. It won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1983. Steve Barron directed the video, a West Side Story style streetscape with Cynthia Rhodes as Rosanna. Setlist.fm counts 1,344 plays since the first on May 7, 1982 in Kurashiki, Japan, third behind "Hold the Line" and "Africa". Weezer covered it in May 2018 after a fan campaign for "Africa", and Toto answered with Weezer's "Hash Pipe".