Question: What do the following songs all have in common?
Aerosmith, Dude (Looks Like a Lady); Clay Aiken, Run to Me; Michael Bolton, How Can We Be Lovers?; Bon Jovi, Livin’ on a Prayer; Cher, We All Sleep Alone; Alice Cooper, Poison; Hanson, Weird; Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, I hate myself for loving you; KISS, Let’s Put the X in Sex; Ricky Martin, Livin’ la Vida Loca; Katy Perry, Waking Up in Vegas; and LeAnn Rimes, Life Goes On.
Answer: They were all written by the same person. I kid you not. Desmond Child. And that list above? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The man has written seventy Top 40 hits. He’s like the Mutt Lange of songwriting. Only more so.
But there’s a personal side to this story. I first heard the name Desmond Child in 1986, when I was eight years old and looking through the liner notes to my Slippery When Wet cassette. I saw that many of the songs had been written or co-written by Desmond. And my assumption at the time was that he was the keyboard player in Bon Joni. I don’t know why I thought he was the keyboard player, I just did.
Fast forward 10 years to 1996, and I’m sitting around with some friends trying to figure out how Bon Jovi went from a legitimate hard rock band in the early 80’s to a bunch of soft rock ballad pap. Aerosmith too. And a friend of mine says, direct quote, “It sounds like freakin’ Michael Bolton is writing their albums.”
Turns out we weren’t far off the mark, as I discovered a few months ago. Desmond Child might very well be the man who kills hard rock outfits. His increasingly prominent influence on both Stephen Tyler and Jon Bon Jovi (check out the list of songs he’s written and note the Bon Jovi and Aerosmith sections) in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s completely wrecked those bands as artistic entities.
And now think about the video for Alice Cooper, Poison. And then recall the video for Michael Bolton, How Can We Be Lovers?
And now begin to rethink your musical tastes. And the creative facade that is much of the music industry. And feel the gap between hard rock and bubblegum pop start shrink.
There are some things you cannot unlearn. I wish I never knew about Desmond Child.
