Bon Jovi
Keep The Faith (Special Edition)

Sound quality is good, but engineered louder than most of my other CDs. Music is brilliant - for Bon Jovi: 5 stars

A very good album of loyal hard rocker John Bon Jovi. The first topic, “I Believe,” is charging us with energy. Next up is “Keep the Faith”, one of the best on the album, first fast, slowly slowing down to the middle, and then again calling to be optimistic: “Everyone needs to love someone, everyone needs to hate someone ... We must keep faith.” The next topic is also full of cheerfulness and enthusiasm despite the not-so-funny title “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”, but its meaning is revealed by the song itself: “I will live while I am alive, and sleep when I die”. Next is “In These Arms” - a romantic song that begins as a ballad and then turns into a real rock anthem of love: “I would do everything, I would give everything so that you would be in my arms today” (especially to me, as a poet , I liked the phrase: "I need you as a poet needs pain"; I completely agree with her - happy people do not become poets). As if in continuation of the theme, “Bed of Roses” appears before us, a slow song that also loses its ballad in the refrain - well, it’s impossible to talk about love calmly when you are overwhelmed with feelings, and the one you love is not with you, and some random girl next to me: “Today I will not be alone, but this does not mean that I am not alone. I have nothing to prove, because it would be for you that I would die. ” Track No. 6, “If I Was Your Mother” is one of John’s best songs about love and music (wonderful transitions from reasonable stiffness to lyricism - even violins are used), and in the text, because in it John expresses an idea that probably , it occurred to every lover: “Ah, if I were your mother!”; and indeed, how else can one become a loved one for the one you love more than anything else, how to prove that your love is as strong as your mother? The next song, “Dry County”, is probably a masterpiece of all time: it’s very beautiful and long (John never had more such 10-minute topics, and most likely will never be), which is a philosophical reflection on what we want from life, what we strive for, that our dreams turn into nothing, and we inevitably go to death; slow bewitching intro is replaced by an emotional chorus and a long solo; unlike the previous ones, this topic is very sad, slow intro and extro, as if framing the composition, imply, in my opinion, the following: at the end of life, as at the beginning, we still don’t know why we live and why there are so many misfortunes in life. As if to release, in order to dispel sadness, we are then presented with “Woman in Love” - a percussion song in which Bon Jovi admires the abundant number of beautiful girls he met in life (oh, he would have seen our Slavic ones!), But I’m sure that there is nobody better, in every sense, than a woman in love - and it is a woman, and not some young girl who still has a wind in her head. Next comes perhaps the toughest and fastest theme on the album - “Fear” (what is called “for headbangers”). "All I Want Is You" again picks up the theme of "In These Arms" and "Bed of Roses" and is very similar in musical structure to them; the name speaks for itself - “All I need is you”, however here we also see a reflection on why people cannot be together: it seems to be nothing complicated, it's not to get stars from the sky, but for some reason does not work. “Blame It on the Love of Rock & Roll” is a funny song about a young guy whom others condemn for his love of rock and his corresponding behavior and appearance (like long hair), but he, know, for his own - “So I never I will not grow up and never grow old. ” The penultimate theme, “Little Bit of Soul”, is a measured hard rock in a classic style with country and jazz tones. This beautiful album ends with the song “Save a Prayer”: it begins with a choral chorus accompanied by drums (something reminiscent of “We Will Rock You”) - a kind of prayer - and then there is a song in which the vocals (Richie Sambora is the first and the only time for the entire album - and John) is passed through the vocoder, which causes a general feeling of alarm, but still remains optimistic: "Pray for me, and I will pray for you." Well, to summarize: Bon Jovi created an album that many probably call commercial, superficial and hell knows what, but we won’t listen to such people - what we have is an excellent combination of hard and ballad songs about love and reflection on life, good music and catchy vocals. Perhaps there are better groups, but it’s in other genres, and in hard and heavy like Bon Jovi you can count on the fingers. According to this, a well-deserved nine (even a little more than nine).

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