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SONG LYRICS
Why Do Stadium Rock Singers Even Pretend They Want Love?
Insincere sentimentality makes no sense within the whole self-image and audience of the genre
Spend long enough slouching on a couch over the holidays, and it’s only a matter of time before Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name comes on the radio. The sane, logical approach is simply to filter it from your auditory nerve the same way you’ve been doing to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Silent Night for the last month or three.
But if, like me, you have a pathological tendency to overthink song lyrics, you instead find yourself wondering: Why? What’s the point of this song?
Not in musical terms — the cultural combustion engine of the 1980s demanded an incessant flow of such big-haired soft rock oxygen to keep it burning, and Bon Jovi played a vital role in that process. (Note to self — could this also be the reason behind the otherwise inexplicable name adopted by Aussie rockers Air Supply?)
No, what puzzles me is the logic behind the messaging of this and countless other ‘lovesick puppy’ drivetime power ballads and anthems by Bon Jovi and the rest of the hair band bunch.
