Susanna Hoffs has admitted that her band’s iconic hit Eternal Flame was nearly never released after the other Bangles member’s rejected the song.

The Bangles’ track went on to become an eighties anthem and Susanna has now told of her horror that the song almost never hit the airwaves at all.

The American singer-songwriter, 64, explained that her bandmates Vicki Peterson and her sister Debbi and Micki Steele didn’t want it included on the third album.

She told The Mirror: ‘The band rejected that song, and I was bereft over it, I was like mortified. I had taken the cassette of Eternal Flame everywhere with me, asking people if I could show them the new song I’d just written.

‘I was really excited about it, but then we had this band meeting about our third album, Everything, and it was rejected. There were four members of the band and everybody got three songs on the album, it was very conscripted, almost anxiety inducing.

‘Mortified’! Susanna Hoffs has admitted that her band’s iconic hit Eternal Flame was nearly never released after the other Bangles member’s rejected the song 

‘Then halfway through the making of album, our last record in the 80s, the producer said, “You know what, Sue? I think Eternal Flame should be on the record”. And I’m like, “Yes! Please, please'”.

Susanna explained that at the time she had no idea the song would go on to become the success story it is today.

She drew on the experience in her debut novel, This Bird Has Flown, which is about a one-hit wonder called Jane who has to live with her parents and performs at Stag Dos as after falling flat in the music industry.

Jane comes to Britain and becomes involved with a English professor at Oxford University.

Susanna’s character also grew up in a Jewish family in Los Angeles and enjoyed major success in her 20s before dropping back into obscurity.

However Susanna says the character isn’t based on herself and she put Jane in the music industry because it is a world she could understand.

Currently, Susanna still continues to tour with The Bangles after they reunited in the late nineties.

The band recorded their last album Sweetheart of the Sun in 2011.

Nearly but not quite! The Bangles’ track went on to become an eighties anthem and Susanna has now told of her horror that the song almost never hit the airwaves at all (1980s)

Despite enjoying much success, the four-piece split in 1990 but later reunited for 1999’s Austin Power’s flick, recording Get The Girl for the motion picture.

Following from the release, they enjoyed a tour in the early 2000’s and recorded a new album Doll Revolution, which inevitability saw bandmate Michael Steele leave the group once and for all.

The band scored several hit singles with Eternal Flame, Maniac Monday and Walk Like An Egyptian throughout the decades.

Band: The American singer-songwriter, 64, explained that her bandmates Vicki Peterson and her sister Debbi and Micki Steele didn’t want it included on the third album (pictured)