sounds quite a bit like It's Hard Letting You Go's instrumentation. Curious that two tracks from These Days actually somewhat resemble absolute 80s pop (the other being Something To Believe In) moreso than anything else, just with a 90s production.

Beautiful Drug = (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone by the Monkees:

https://youtu.be/nCM7qcRyfKo

Simply can't be accidental.

LMAO, that is uncanny. Three writers to steal the entire hook; nice catch.

having something inspired or stolen from a song from the sixties is better than stealing from current artists. This makes me like Beautiful Drug even more.

Dyin' Ain't Much Of A Livin'
 

This will sound strange but there is a Bulgarian song from 1985 which sounds identical to Dyin' Ain't Much Of A Livin', which was released in 1990.

Here is a little mix between the two songs which I made:
https://soundcloud.com/karen-manuelyan/jovi-lz

Here is a link to the full Bulgarian song:

Well, there are some similarities in the chorus' melody - which are partly caused by the same, common rhyme scheme. But I wouldn't go that far to say they sound identical.

Sorry, you're right, they are not identical of course, but the whole structure, transitions and chorus sound really similar. :)

Jon Bon Jovi and the songs he cleverly stole from others.
 

It's just occurred to me that "Misunderstood" sounds quite similar to The Calling's "Final Answer".


Similar sounding acoustic intro, guitar solo and outro and generally hits a lot of the same beats musically. It's fairly plausible as their debut album Camino Palmero was released the previous year and it produced their biggest hit "Wherever You Will Go". Though it was only an album track and most of the album was quite generic, of it's time and generally forgettable so I'm not sure if it would have caught Jon's attention. The Calling did cite Bon Jovi as one of their influences though.

For some reason I've decided to revisit The Calling lately and only noticed this now.

Hmm I don't hear too much similarity melodically but stylistically for sure this was the sound they were going after. I know Jon touted The Calling as the next big thing during promo for Crush.

The sound of this song reminds me so much of high school, wow.