Songoftheday 8/13/18 - Mother mother tell your children that their time has just begun, I have suffered for my anger there are wars that can't be won...

"Keep The Faith" - Bon Jovi
from the album Keep The Faith (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #29 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9

Today's song of the day comes from Jersey Boys Bon Jovi, whose fourth album name-checking their state spun off five top ten pop hits with "Living In Sin", "Lay Your Hands On Me", "Born To Be My Baby", and a pair of #1 singles in "Bad Medicine" and "I'll Be There For You". After a massive international tour in 1989, the band took a break from each other, with leader Jon Bon Jovi recording a solo album soundtrack to accompany his role in the movie Young Guns II, and from it again topped the American pop chart with "Blaze Of Glory" as well as a top-20 follow-up in "Miracle". Guitarist Richie Sambora also released his own solo set, Stranger In This Town, which landed a minor pop hit with "Ballad Of Youth" (#63). In 1991, the guys, after firing their management and hiring producer Bob Rock, went in to record their next album Keep The Faith. Trying to eschew their hair-metal roots, they emerged with an album of hard rock not unlike what fellow rockers Aerosmith were doing, only with less shrieking and more workingman grunting. The title track, written by Bon Jovi and Sambora along with "song doctor" Desmond Child, served as the lead single for the record, with bass player Alec John Such, drummer Tico Torres, and keyboardist David Bryan laying down a groove that latter-day INXS was jamming out at the time. However, all the talk was about Jon's hair, which was cut to a length to give him half Richard Marx, half John Mellencamp realness...

"Keep The Faith" returned the band to the top of the rock radio chart, spending a week at #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock format list. However, pop radio was a bit more reluctant, and the single only made it to the top-30 in November of 1992. Internationally, the single was a much bigger success, topping the chart in Norway and Spain, and reaching the top ten in Switzerland (#3), Finland (#3), New Zealand (#4), Canada (#5), the UK (#5), Ireland (#5), Sweden (#7), Germany (#8), the Netherlands (#9), and Australia (#10).

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Bon Jovi released a live concert video recorded in Queens about the same time as the album. Here's "Keep the Faith" from the intimate show...