Songfacts®:

• "Heads I win, tails you lose" is a pretty good bet for whoever is flipping the coin, not so much for the adversary. In the song, Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy lays into his hater with a series of clever insults in the spirit of "You're A Mean One Mr. Grinch." "I may not be a doctor but you're sick as a flu," he sings. "You're a user, you're a slime."
  
  Ratt had plenty of detractors, but Pearcy doesn't claim to have anyone specific in mind. "That song has a stock approach with a groove that won't quit," he wrote in the 2007 Tell the World: The Very Best of Ratt compilation.
• Stephen Pearcy wrote the song with Ratt's guitarist Warren DeMartini, and with the hit songwriter Desmond Child, who co-produced it with Arthur Payson. According to DeMartini, the song came quickly when he and Pearcy were writing together one day in the spring of 1989, with Pearcy writing the lyrics as DeMartini played his guitar. They polished the song later with Child, who worked on most of the other tracks from the album as well, including the lead single, "Lovin' You's A Dirty Job."
• That's Jon Bon Jovi singing backup vocals on the chorus. He and Ratt go back aways - Bon Jovi was an opening act for Ratt on their 1985 World Infestation tour before the New Jersey rockers released their Slippery When Wet album. It was Desmond Child who arranged for Jon to sing on the track. Child was tight with Bon Jovi - he co-wrote some of their biggest songs, including "Livin' On A Prayer" and "You Give Love A Bad Name."
• Detonator was Ratt's last album before they split up in 1992. The band was going through a lot of turmoil when they were making it, especially with guitarist Robbin Crosby, who was falling victim to drug and alcohol abuse. The the band started up again in 1996, it was without Crosby, who died of complications from AIDS in 2002.