Those are probably two of my favourites off the album, although I do agree that they do sound very similar

I always liked the verses in Taking It Back, but thought that the chorus sucked. It sounds like a (slower) carbon copy of Tokyo Road.

Agreed. They tried really hard to lean into Drop D tuning on that album to the point that The Distance, Love me Back to Life, Undivided and Hook me Up all involve the same first chord.

What? Why? I love ITA, don't get me wrong, but KTF did very well, and "oh wow, another love song from an '80s band, who knew" would not have made for such a good transition into the 90s as KTF did.

Keep The Faith, in my opinion, was the only time they showed balls and took a chance with their lead single. It was very left field for them at the time and just what they needed to cut loose from their 80's image.

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Would Memory not count as a bit unexpected in regard to first single? Certainly a departure from IML, Everyday (I think that was the first one off Bounce) and HAND

Well, somewhat yes and no :D
Yeah, it cut the string of songs in the vein of IML for once, but at the same time, it was just a ballad as a lead single, like This Ain't A Love Song or Always had been previously. A more mellow approach and a good one, but at that time Jon already gotten the public image of a being a cheesy ballad singer, so it wasn't much of a suprise to people.
Keep The Faith was vastly different to anything they had done prior sound and rhythm wise. Many 80's bands had their highlight moments in the 90's with the typcial rock ballad, but for Bon Jovi to have the guts and break that mould by going with the song standing for the new sound first, that shows some balls. Unfortunately, he lost them somewhere in the late 90's...

This is highly subjective and purely based on my instinct on which song would have done best commercially. I love KTF, but it just doesn't scream "hit" to me as much as ITA does. It has everything you want from a Bon Jovi single - anthemic chorus, catchy melody, uptempo, Jon going balls to the wall vocally and a great solo from Richie.

If you look at their chart positions, KTF and ITA did very similarly, but KTF had a huge advantage of being the lead single. This leads me to speculate that ITA being put in this position would have fared even better. Plus, BOR is by far the biggest hit of the album (based on Spotify/YouTube numbers and reactions when it starts playing during live shows) and when your second single is the biggest, it would logically mean that the choice for the first single was a mistake.

That being said, I can't disagree on Dominik's point to KTF being more ballsy. It definitely was a statement that this is a different band than they were in the 80s. I just don't think that's the most important criteria when selecting the lead single. To some extent, this is splitting hairs, as both songs are popular and have stood the test of time.

On a semi-separate topic (I don't want to make a separate post), I definitely agree about Memory being a ballsy lead single too. Yes, it's a ballad, but not the type you'd expect from Bon Jovi (Till We Ain't Strangers would've been closer to that). But since they didn't have a strong single laying around in the LH era (except for Walk Like A Man, IMO), I largely agree with that decision.

Releasing Lost Highway a the first single would have been the typical band move and I'm really happy they didn't. Memory has a lot of substance to it and not a really....typical style of ballad for them I feel like. At least not the paint by numbers ballad in their recent history and even on that album.

I wonder who rated these songs. I gotta say that I agree with most of them.

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