"Bad Medicine" is a song by American rock band Bon Jovi. It was written by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, and Desmond Child, and was released on September 12, 1988, as the lead single from the band's fourth album, New Jersey (1988). The song reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, Bon Jovi's third single to do so, and became a top-10 hit in Australia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
"Bad Medicine" | ||||
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Single by Bon Jovi | ||||
from the album New Jersey | ||||
B-side | "99 in the Shade" | |||
Released | September 12, 1988 | |||
Genre | Glam metal[1][2][3] | |||
Length |
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Label | Mercury | |||
Songwriter(s) | ||||
Producer(s) | Bruce Fairbairn | |||
Bon Jovi singles chronology | ||||
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Music video | ||||
"Bad Medicine" on YouTube |
Cash Box said that "producer Bruce Fairbairn and Jon Bon Jovi fashion gang harmonies around a typically monumental guitar sound."[4]
There are two videos for the song, one with the band live in concert, and a more well-known live video which begins with a crowd of young people waiting in line to get into the video shoot. Before being let in, one of the security guards asks if there are any questions, and Sam Kinison asks if the video will "be the same of video slop that we get from these glam rock pretty boys". When the answers "yes", Kinison rallies the crowd to hijack the cameras and "make a better Bon Jovi video than these guys can." The members of the crowd are given hand-held cameras and invited onstage to help shoot the video.
Weekly charts edit
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Year-end charts edit
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Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
Australia (ARIA)[26] | Platinum | 70,000‡ |
United Kingdom (BPI)[27] | Silver | 200,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. |
Region | Date | Format(s) | Label(s) | Ref. |
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United Kingdom | September 12, 1988 |
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Vertigo | [28] |
United States | September 14, 1988 |
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Mercury | [29] |
Japan | October 10, 1988 | Mini-CD | [30] | |
February 25, 1989 | Mini-album | [31] |
If there was a song that showcased just how larger than life Bon Jovi had become by the time "New Jersey" dropped, it was "Bad Medicine." To be clear, the single was in line with the glam metal every rock band was doing in the late 1980s. Bon Jovi was just doing it better.
Bon Jovi did something similar when they used New Jersey as the title for their first album after their insanely popular 1986 album Slippery When Wet. With that title, Bon Jovi put their roots front and center, making the implicit point that they weren't one of those Sunset Strip glam metal bands. But for the first single from that album, Bon Jovi dropped maybe the most straight-up Sunset Strip glam metal song of their career.
PolyGram is to release 'Bad Medicine' as the album's leadoff single Sept. 14.