It became one of Cooper's biggest hit singles in the United States, peaking at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100.

"Poison" marked a major comeback for Alice Cooper, becoming his first Top 10 hit in the US and UK for 12 and 16 years respectively, and remains one of his best known songs.

It is ranked by Billboard as the "91st top song of 1989", while Ultimate Classic Rock ranked it as the "7th best Alice Cooper song", commenting "Poison sounds like a typical '80s pop-metal number at times, but Cooper’s intensity brings it to a whole other level.

There are two versions of the video to the song, one of which shows Alice Cooper being chained to a bizarre mechanism and singing while a ghostly woman looms over him.

Rana Kennedy plays the roles of both women in the video but the topless scene were shot with a body double.