Bon Jovi – Keep The Faith (1992) Review

Very few things from the late ’80s managed to stay cool in the early ’90s.

I think we can all agree that Jon Bon Jovi’s ability to adapt his hairstyle was one of them, as was his skill for writing chorus-heavy rock music, and his pronunciation of the word “thayngs” — which is things to you and I.

All of these attributes are out in full force on Bon Jovi’s fifth record, Keep The Faith.

Changing Times

In 1992, Bon Jovi had a problem — and it wasn’t a shortage of hits.

Rock was changing fast. The arrival of the grunge scene meant that the old rules were being torn up, and “big” bands were suddenly being treated like yesterday’s news. So when Bon Jovi announced their return in early 1992, the response was… muted.

Not hatred, but worse: indifference.

Keep The Faith is the sound of a band refusing to accept a pre-determined fate. They sharpened their guitars, ditched some of the ‘80s gloss, and aimed for something tougher and more grown-up — without abandoning the hooks that made them enormous in the first place.

Commercially, the pivot worked. In the UK, Keep The Faith hit No. 1 and racked up 78 weeks on the chart. It also spawned six singles. This success elevated the New Jerseyans into an elite tier of rock acts — alongside Guns N’ Roses and Metallica — seemingly unaffected by the grunge wave which was laying waste to their peers.

“Our genre had been kicked in the teeth by Nirvana while we were away. We saw some of our old rivals trying to jump on that trend, but that’s just not us. We also knew we couldn’t re-write Livin’ On A Prayer, so we got rid of the clichés, got a haircut (laughs), and took some time to make what I feel is our best record so far. The pressure to adapt actually helped us, creatively, because I would never have been able to write songs like Dry Country or Bed Of Roses five years ago.”

– Jon Bon Jovi

Highlight After Highlight

At 66 minutes, Keep The Faith is the longest Bon Jovi album to date — and the impressive part is how rarely it feels padded.

The early run is stacked with big statements. In These Arms is a nailed-on classic: pure romantic melodrama, delivered with absolute conviction. Elswehere, Bed Of Roses is the kind of power ballad most bands spend their whole career chasing, andthe stomping I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead drives like it’s trying to outrun the decade.

Meanwhile, the title track (Keep The Faith) delivers one of their most ridiculous chorus pay-offs — arguably their best since Livin’ On A Prayer — and it’s no surprise it became a major UK hit in its own right.

Stick To Your Guns

While the album’s singles do the heavy lifting, the deeper cuts offer real progress.

Storming opener I Believe is audible proof of a band attempting to sound bigger and more serious at the same time — and, crucially, pulling it off.

Musically it’s another direct, radio-friendly rocker to add to their catalogue, but it carries a lyrical tone that defies their old “party rock” reputation. The frontman uses the track to fire several barbs in the direction of his hard rock peers, whom he believed were “selling their souls” in an attempt to cash in on the short-lived grunge trend, while delivering a message on mental health which felt years ahead of its time.

This is Bon Jovi reaching for something more socially aware — not always subtle, but something genuinely aimed at adulthood rather than adolescence — and there’s a clear line of trajectory from here to It’s My Life.

"Don't look up to your movie screens,
Your records or your magazines,
Close your eyes and you will see,
That you are all you really need."

I BELIEVE

All Grown Up

The clearest sign of ambition is Dry County.

Ten minutes long, structurally restless, and completely uninterested in playing it safe, it’s Bon Jovi at their most expansive.

This is where Richie Sambora, in particular, earns his keep. The longer runtime affords him significantly more room to build, vary the tension, and then unload a solo that feels like a career peak rather than a routine flex.

At The Peak Of Their Powers

The heartwrenching ballad Bed Of Roses proves to be unusually personal for a band of this size.

With solid groundwork laid by Sambora’s sutble guitar hooks and David Bryan’s delicate piano arrangement, Jon Bon Jovi laments the inner-conflict which saw his personal life leak into the media shortly before the band entered the studio.

Having promised his wife that he was “done being a rock star” upon completion of the band’s exhaustive New Jersey world tour in 1990, he apologises profusely for finding the lure of the other woman in his life — the stage — too difficult to resist.

"As you close your eyes,
Know that I'm thinkin' about you,
While my mistress she calls me,
To stand in her spotlight again."

BED OF ROSES

Quality Throughout

As you move deeper into the album you’ll find the venomous Fear.

Written as a cynical sequel to Livin’ On A Prayer (“Take my hand, I know we’ll make it!”), the frontman mercilessly deletes the hope of the ’80s anthem — replacing it with a bleak story of shattered dreams, which sounds like it could’ve been written on the rain-drenched streets of Gotham City.

The New Jersey giants are louder than ever here, and it’s followed by a terrific vocal performance on hidden bonus track Save A Prayer worthy of a spot on the main record.

Still Shedding Their Skin

Not everything lands, of course.

Ultra-heavy midtempo rocker If I Was Your Mother fails to make the most of its monstrous guitar riff via some poorly conceived lyrics, meanwhile deeper cuts like Woman In Love and I Want You — both tracks which would’ve fared better had they been released five years earlier — struggle under the weight of Bob Rock’s crunching production.

Because here’s the real issue — Keep The Faith captures a snapshot of a band still in transition.

On one hand, you’ve got longer songs, heavier themes, and a push toward maturity. On the other, they still haven’t shaken off their ’80s bombast. This leads to several instances where Jon Bon Jovi’s expanding musical ambitions clash with his inability to save himself from himself — when he’s not delivering socially conscious lyrics and ten-minute epics, he’s telling us that “Seven days of Saturday is all that I need” (I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead) and declaring his undying lust for all of womankind (Woman In Love).

It’s this jarring combination of backwards and forwards which makes Keep The Faith such an unusual record.

"Tell me what I've got to do,
To make my life mean more to you,
I could get so close it's true,
If I was your mother."

IF I WAS YOUR MOTHER

Bon Jovi – Keep The Faith

Keep The Faith is a resounding success not because it chased grunge, but because it updated the band’s palette without ripping out its engine.

Louder, harder, and more ambitious than anything they’d done before, it’s the sound of a band trying to muscle their way through a lanscape that was shifting beneath their feet — while still delivering the kind of stadium-sized choruses that built their empire.

It’s arguably the final time Bon Jovi sounded both hungry and in control.

But despite all of this, it received a frosty critical reception upon initial release — largely down to poor journalism and even worse timing (e.g. once-heralded UK publications like Kerrang! and Raw Magazine delivered snarky reviews for “not being Nirvana enough”) — so allow us to right this wrong today:

Not only does it rank amongst Bon Jovi’s best work, Keep The Faith stands tall as one of the best albums of the nineties, period.

>> Keep The Faith is part of our Bon Jovi discography guide.