Artist: Bon Jovi
Album: 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong
This was one of the tracks the box set that I found difficult to get into when I first got the box set. I suppose a lot of it was because the song starts off so simply with just Jon’s voice and the guitar. Without the keyboards, drums and the heavier production of the regular album tracks, it was too far outside the boundaries of what I had accepted as Bon Jovi’s music.
But once you get to the chorus, this song really opens fire, and then I got it. Jon’s voice isn’t perfect here, but this song is built around the passion in the chorus and the slow burn of the verses that build up to it. Those choruses hit like the blows of a musical sledgehammer.
This is one of the songs that led me to truly appreciate Jon’s musical skills. The lyrics might not be the greatest–some of the choruses tend toward the repetitive, and the lyrics border a bit on cheesy. However, the building tension of the verses that lead up to the power of the choruses is very well performed here.
In a lot of ways, this song showcases the core of the best of Bon Jovi’s songs–their ability to write songs that build perfectly up to big choruses. This structure is what the best arena rock is built on–and ‘The Fire Inside’ displays the technical grasp of this format that made the band great. Like the demo version of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ that’s also on the box set, this song really helped give me an insight into what made Bon Jovi so great at what they do.
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