But it’s one of the most memorable Bon Jovi songs, period, tighter and louder than 1988 banger “Bad Medicine” and 1984’s relatively prog “Runaway” combined. Just replace the piano dun-dun with a reunion from the talk box from “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and you have the first Peter Frampton-influenced thing in years to take the charts hostage, in addition to the heaviest and most industrial(!) this band has ever sounded. The biggest Bon Jovi hit since 1986 sounds like someone else entirely: Max Martin, its co-writer, whose sonic template here follows Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” and his other minor-key smashes. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ve got this far lighter Stones-ian chugger that would’ve fit right onto the Black Crowes’ Shake Your Money Maker. There’s the completely ridiculous ten-minute epic “Dry County” that at long last allows them to get all their most pretentious Bruce-inspired ideas out, and doesn’t turn out half-bad in its class-conscious Mellencamp theater. Unlike most of their brethren, 1992 was a good year for Bon Jovi because the super-long Keep the Faith (which may be their best record) showed how much they had to offer beyond a quickly-dating formula. Definitive proof that Bon Jovi listens to Bob Mould? We may never know, but the tune’s Exhibit A.

And what a riff, one of the rare instances of Bon Jovi verses trumping the refrain. Maybe they were deflated by the fact Bon Jovi of all people perfected its jangle-metal sound a few years earlier with the Gin Blossoms-on-steroids anthem “Have a Nice Day,” which doesn’t sound crazily different from “It’s My Life” and features a far less memorable chorus, but may be more satisfying in its overall power and groundswell. Released in 2008, Accelerate was R.E.M.’s most aggressive album in years, and it was nice to hear one of the best rock bands of all-time so furious and amped-up again, but not a ton of its songs stuck beyond the rush of the sound itself. And someone better call Dashboard Confessional about the bridge: “Your clothes are still scattered all over our room / This whole place still smells like your cheap perfume.” “Baby I want you, like the roses want the rain!” Jon Bon Jovi shrieks, for what won’t be the last instance of rose imagery on 1992’s Keep the Faith, and he follows it with an even more emo killer: “You know I need you / Like a poet needs the pain!” And if you thought it couldn’t get even more skyward from there, in crashes the chorus built on the same chord progression as “Don’t Stop Believin’” (to which Bon Jovi winks, maybe unknowingly, “I still believe” at one point).

Bon Jovi by Jon Bon Jovi