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Old 09-23-2020, 10:40 PM
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Supersonic Supersonic is offline
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Join Date: 03 Aug 2002
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Default Rate: Say It Isn't So

Aloha !

It's hard to imagine this would've been the first single for Crush. It did really poor, even when not comparing it to the succes of It's My Life and when Crush was released a lot of people agreed on this being one of the weaker songs on the album. I'd even go as far as saying this is the first single that wasn't universally liked by fans. It's not hard to understand how the band was told by management they needed a much better single to announce their comeback.

I think it's an odd one. It has a blend of everything and none of it works together. The lyrics are interesting but the first and third verse have nothing to do with the second verse. The overall production doesn't work either. It's the first Bon Jovi single without a guitar solo. There's no chorus to pump your first to. The song doesn't really have a flow either, you're constantly wonder when it'll take off making it sound really, really forced. Tico once said in an interview they had to do several demo's of the song as they could never work out the right beat and it's not hard to imagine why.

It never worked live either. The song wasn't released as a single in the U.S.A. because It's My Life was still riding the charts by the time the rest of the world was waiting for a follow up and yet because Bon Jovi fans wanted to see the video VH1 had it in heavy rotation in America and thus Jon wound up putting it in the set for every American show in 2001. Any time you're listening to a bootleg off that tour you wind up wondering what posessed Jon to open an encore with this one as it never, ever worked.

I wonder what would've happened if the song would've been better. It's clear It's My Life was a clever song, catering towards a pop audience while incorporating everything that made Bon Jovi the massive band they are today. It was very calculated and it paid off really well. That said, Say It Isn't So is the exact opposite, catering towards alternative rock listeners like Destination Anywhere did as well. What if the song would actually have been any good? A good Bon Jovi song produced like an alternative rock song with the catchy chorusses made familiar by them. Would it have saved them if It's My Life wasn't there?

5/10

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan
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