Bon Jovi: Keep The Faith (1992) Review

I think we can all agree that Jon Bon Jovi’s hairstyle is one of the few things which was cool in both the 1980s and 1990s.

Just like his knack for writing chorus-driven rock songs, and his pronunciation of the word “thayngs”, which is “things” to you and I.

So you’ll be pleased to know that each of these attributes is out in force on the band’s fifth album, Keep The Faith, a record which went on to sell more than 10 million copies, and spawn an impressive six hit singles.

Changing Times

These are impressive sales figures by anybody’s standards, but especially when we consider the timing.

You see, this was achieved during the height of the grunge wave.

Bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam had usurped the hair metal acts which ruled the rock landscape the last time Bon Jovi were around and, such was media’s contempt and disdain towards anything hair metal, a raft of once huge bands had recently fell by the wayside (Motley Crue, Poison, Ratt).

So when news of Bon Jovi’s impending return was met with a rather tepid response, it seemed like Keep The Faith was destined to fail.

The album’s unexpected success was a massive achievement for the band, elevating them into an elite tier of rock artists – alongside the likes of Metallica and Guns N’ Roses – who were seemingly impervious to the grunge plague which was laying waste to everything else in it’s path.

“We were fully aware of what had happened to our genre of music in the time we were away. We’d been kicked in the teeth by the likes of Nirvana.

I saw others trying to jump on that trend, but I had no interest.

On the flipside, I knew we couldn’t just try to re-write Livin’ On A Prayer, because the scene had moved on, you know?

So we got rid of the clichés, got haircuts (laughs), and took time creating what I feel is our best record so far. The songs on Keep The Faith are socially conscious, and I believe the pressure to adapt helped us creatively. I would never have been able to write songs like Dry Country or Bed Of Roses five years ago.”

– Jon Bon Jovi

“We were fully aware of what had happened to our genre of music in the time we were away. We’d been kicked in the teeth by the likes of Nirvana.

I saw others trying to jump on that trend, but I had no interest.

On the flipside, I knew we couldn’t just try to re-write Livin’ On A Prayer, because the scene had moved on, you know?

So we got rid of the clichés, got haircuts (laughs), and took time creating what I feel is our best record so far.

The songs on Keep The Faith are socially conscious, and I believe the pressure to adapt helped us creatively. 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 record to date.

It’s front-loaded with a handful of massive singles, including the driving beat of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, a stone-wal classic in the form of In These Arms, and stupendously good power ballad Bed Of Roses.

Meanwhile, the title track sees them uncork their best chorus since Livin’ On A Prayer.

Stick To Your Guns

While the hits grabbed the spotlight, special praise must be reserved for the album opener I Believe.

At it’s core, it’s a laser-focused, radio-friendly rocker, and it’s easy to see how the band would eventually get from this point to It’s My Life a few years further down the line.

But when take a deeper look into the lyrics we can see there’s plenty more going on under the hood.

Coming nearly two decades before social media, Jon Bon Jovi openly discusses the mental health challenges of trying to live up to the impossibly high standards set by Hollywood and the media, and takes pot shots at Bon Jovi’s former hair metal contemporaries whom he felt were “selling their souls” in order to cash in on the short-lived grunge trend.

"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

One of the most impressive aspects of Keep The Faith is how much Bon Jovi have matured as songwriters.

We simply haven’t heard this level of ambition from them before.

Clocking in at a mammoth 10 minutes, Dry Country is by far the most experimental track they’ve released to date.

It’s a great listen from start to finish, as Jon Bon Jovi’s tortured vocals tell a story of struggle, matched only (maybe even topped) by axeman Richie Sambora, who uses the lengthier runtime to unleash a handful of great riffs before delivering what we think will be remembered as the greatest guitar solo of his career.

(Yes, it’s that good!)

At The Peak Of Their Powers

The astoundingly well-written ballad Bed Of Roses provides another of the album’s finest moments.

It’s a track which sees the frontman shed light on the difficulties in his personal life, which had surfaced in the media during the two year period leading up to Keep The Faith.

Having made promises to his wife that he was “done being a rock star” following completion of the exhausting New Jersey tour in 1990, he apologises profusely for finding himself unable to resist the call of the other lady in his life (the band).

"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

As you move deeper into the playlist you’ll find the venom-filled Fear.

Written as a cynical follow-up to Livin’ On A Prayer (“Take my hand, I know we’ll make it!”), the frontman deletes the hope of the 80s and replaces it with a bleak story of broken dreams which sounds like it was written on the rain-soaked streets of Gotham City.

The band are louder than we’ve ever head them on this song, and it’s a crime it was never released as a single.

Finally, “hidden bonus song” Save A Prayer contains a top vocal performance worthy of a spot on the LP.

Still Shedding Their Skin

Not everything lands, of course.

The ultra-heavy If I Was Your Mother is let down by unusually poor lyrics.

Meanwhile, album tracks like Woman In Love and I Want You struggle under the mighty weight of Bob Rock’s powerhouse production, and would’ve fared better as part of Slippery When Wet or New Jersey.

"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

But the conundrum – and one of the most insteresting things – about Keep The Faith is that it captures a snapshot of New Jersey’s biggest rock exports at a very interesting junction in their careers (dare we say; Crossroads?).

For while they’re clearly trying to adapt their sound for a more mature audience, they haven’t fully shaken off their 1980s bombast.

This leads to several moments where Jon Bon Jovi’s expanding musical ambition clashes with his inability to save himself from himself.

Because on the one hand we have ten minute epics and socially conscious lyrics, but on the other he’s declaring his undying lust for all of womankind (Woman In Love) and tells us that “Seven days of Saturday is all that I need!” (I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead).

It’s this jarring combination of backwards and forwards which produces many of Keep The Faith’s grandest moments, and even though they would further refine their sound on future albums, they would never truly sound this great again.

Bon Jovi: Keep The Faith

It pleases us to say that Keep The Faith is a resounding success.

It cemented Bon Jovi’s status as a top tier rock act, and they deserve credit for finding a way to update their sound without changing their core values.

Interestingly, despite selling, it never received much praise from the media at the time of release.

This was mainly as a result of poor timing and even worse journalism (e.g. once-heralded music publications like Kerrang! and Raw! each handed it scathing reviews for “not being Nirvana enough”), so allow me to right this wrong today:

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