You Give Love a Bad Name
by Bon Jovi
- 123
- BPM
- C minor
- Key
- 5A
- Camelot
- 54
- Danceability
- 8
- Acousticness
Bon Jovi were still opening for 38 Special when their manager, Doc McGhee, decided the band needed a video for MTV. He hired Wayne Isham, who had directed videos for McGhee's other band, Mötley Crüe. The two bands were competitive. Mötley Crüe felt betrayed that Isham would work for Bon Jovi. At the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, Isham had the Bon Jovi name painted on the stage and made sure the band did not see it until shooting began. The clip for "You Give Love a Bad Name" used only color concert footage, much of it of Jon Bon Jovi. After it debuted, the band became a headliner.
The song was written by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and Desmond Child, about a woman who has jilted her lover. It was the first single from Slippery When Wet and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 29, 1986, the band's first number one.
Its chorus tune already had a history. Bonnie Tyler had recorded it as "If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)", with different lyrics commissioned by her producer, Jim Steinman. Child was dissatisfied with how it fared in the US and the UK. He blamed her label's reluctance to promote it. He rewrote it with Jon Bon Jovi and Sambora.
You Give Love a Bad Name runs at 123 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.95 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 488 ms. It is in C minor, Camelot 5A, which shares its notes with Eb major and mixes cleanly with F minor and G minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.