If you have ever heard “If You Were A Woman” by the late Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, it may sound familiar.
Many people have noticed how the 1986 Tyler anthem sounds like “You Give Love A Bad Name” by Bon Jovi. Well, both have the same writer and their similarities have caused controversy over the years.
“If You Were A Woman” was written by Demond Child and Jim Steinman. Steinman had heard Child’s work and asked him to write a very specific track.
“He asked me to write a song, he said, ‘Write me a song that has the verse like Tina Turner, the b section like The Police and the chorus like Bruce Springsteen. Can you do that?’ I said, ‘Yes I can.’ And [he said], ‘One more thing – it has to have something to do with androgyny.’ That’s all he said,” Child said, per Music Radar.
But the song wasn’t as big of an international hit as Child felt it should be. The track peaked at number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 87 on the Canadian RPM Top Singles chart. So the writer wanted it to have a second life.
“She cut it and it was a big hit in Europe and I think it went all the way to the top in certain territories, but nobody did anything with that here in the United States,” he recalls. “And so two years went by and I was kind of disappointed because I knew that was a hit chorus.
“I was sore at the record company for not pushing that song [“If You Were A Woman (And I Was a Man)”], and I said, “I’m going to prove that that song’s a hit!” So we wrote it again,” he explained.
Child repurposed the anthem for Bon Jovi, with the song originally being called “Shot Through The Heart.” He claimed he told the New Jersey rockers that the song’s chorus has its origins in a Bonnie Tyler song.
“I said, ‘Look I have this song that I wrote for Bonnie Tyler, and I really think the chorus is a hit song,'” Child added. “The Bonnie Tyler kind of had that same [hums synth part from the Bonnie Tyler song] and it was a little bit like “Billie Jean,” or Eurythmics [“Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This”] so I said, ‘Richie, play this’ [Child hums the guitar riff that would feature on You Give Love A Bad Name] and he said, ‘No man that’s like Michael Jackson, man – we’re a rock band.’ I said, ‘Play it on the guitar and chug it’.”
If you don’t know these songs, you may recognize the tune from “Kings & Queens” by pop star Ava Max. The recent track samples the tune, although knowing which song sample
“Ava Max and her team of nine writers came up with a song called “Kings & Queens,” he explained. “So then they came to me and they asked for an interpolation license “For You Give Love A Bad Name”. Because they thought they were different enough. I said, ‘No, you’ve got to listen to the original song –”If You Were A Woman And I Was A Man.
“I don’t know if they’d ever heard the original, but that melody pulled them back to the original and that’s the song that was interpolated in Kings & Queens. And my name is on the song as a co-writer.”
Bonnie Tyler recently passed away at 75 after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery. Over her career, the songstress has sold millions of records, had 3 Grammy Award nominations and earned an MBE for her services to music.
Related: ‘80s Icons Pay Tribute to Bonnie Tyler: ‘One of the Great Voices of Rock’
