You can get the crowd to sing along with “Livin’ on a Prayer,” but “Always,” well, “when I die, you’ll be on my mind,” but you won’t be on the set list. After the end of the band’s tour in 1996, “Always” was pretty much removed from the catalog, as Bon Jovi no longer had the chops to sing it. Despite being Bon Jovi’s best-selling single ever (yes, “Always” was a bigger hit than “Livin’ on a Prayer” ever was), it was only reliably and enthusiastically performed live for two glorious years.Ĭross Road was released in 1994. As it makes its final vows to lost love, the soaring, effortless Spinto tenor of Slippery When Wet and New Jersey knows its weight. When Bon Jovi and friends saw the crapfest movie, they shelved the song, where it lingered until the greatest of all Greatest Hits albums rolled around a year or two later: Cross Road.īittersweetly, sublimely, “Always” is Bon Jovi hitting his vocal limit. Watch the deservedly monstrous video, which struck the first blow by introducing 14-year-old me to Keri Russell, lending the satin bra all the gleeful and forbidden sexiness it ever had.Īs the opening lyrics hint, the song was originally intended as the pop single for the garbage-and-a-half Gary Oldman erotic thriller (that turned out to be as terrible an idea as it sounds) Romeo is Bleeding.
“Always” embodies, celebrates and mourns all that is beautiful about the monster ballad. Submitted for your approval, the valedictory monster ballad from the greatest of the monster balladeers, The Troubadour of Sayreville, Jon Bon Jovi. And that raises the possibility that the entire song is self-parody. So Walter appears in the music video, reading a newspaper while the rest of the band plays (see left). Chicago has a saxophonist, Walter Parazaider, but “You’re the Inspiration” doesn’t have a sax part. In the video, Peter Cetera wears a Bauhaus t-shirt (see above). And that, my friends, is the Chicago Way.īut I think Chicago is actually playing an elaborate musical joke on us. It’s overwrought, overproduced, and over-the-top in every respect. No man should talk like that unless he’s giving his wedding vows. And consider the embarrassingly-sincere lyrics: Choruses in perfect three-part harmony? Check. Musically, this hits every page in the Monster Ballad playbook. But in my exhausted state, it struck me as a revelation. Logically, I must have heard “You’re the Inspiration” before that night. In desperation, I opened up iTunes and typed in the city we were trying to channel: Chicago. But around two in the morning, we found ourselves running out of steam with our heroine still stuck in the past, trying to hold off a mind-controlling alien while her fairy companion protected Eugene V. We found ourselves staring at some gaping plot holes the day before the deadline, so we armed ourselves with Snapple and Twizzlers and got to work. Neither of us knew anything about Chicago, the Gilded Age, or (as our high school girlfriends can attest to) teenage girls. It was an educational novel about a modern teenage girl sent back to Gilded Age Chicago.
Three years ago, stokes and I were contracted to write a book. But that tension–and even that pain–is to me a large part of what listening to a monster ballad is all about. It’s actually kind of painful to listen to. Listen to it again: Keifer sounds like he’s singing in the bathroom upstairs of the studio where the rest of the band is being recorded. Cinderella’s particular solution was to have Keifer sing the way he normally does, and try to balance everything out with studio effects.
That singing which works belted out over blast-beat drums and detuned guitars does not work over strings and piano.
Now, whenever a hard rock band does a downtempo number, they must contend with the lead singer’s voice. So although Cinderella is now known pretty much ONLY for DKWYG(TIG), at the time it was a chance for the bad boys of rock to show off their soft sides. When they were famous, it was for fast paced, aggressive metal. and the two seconds of rain timed to the appearance of the word "rain" in the lyrics.įurthermore, Cinderella was a straight up hair band.