#53 - She Don't Know Me

Artist: Bon Jovi
Album: Bon Jovi
Other Versions: None
Era: early 80s "synth rock"

Lyrics
Video

A bit more background on the beginnings of my Bon Jovi obsession: After I'd listened to the box set approximately six million times, it began to wear thin. But I still wanted more Bon Jovi stuff. I was fairly new to LimeWire at the time, and accidentally searched for just videos when I was trying to find more.

One of the first videos I got was "She Don't Know Me" and holy crap I almost died laughing. This video is the epitome of cheesy, second only to "Only Lonely"(general plot: the gay biker mafia is after Bon Jovi! David fights them off while Jon gets laid) as the cheesiest Bon Jovi video ever. It's like this cheesy mini-movie deal where Jon is stalking this girl or maybe she's stalking him and Jon walks around shirtless on a beach at night and then when he's about to get shot she pulls a gun on his attackers and saves his life. Seriously. That is the video, I swear I am not making this up, and I haven't had any cold medicine tonight.

I only mention the video because I just can't listen to this song without seeing the video. Especially the line "I try hard to be straight" which instantly conjures up this one part of the video where Jon's walking around in a teal tank top and tight tight jeans, hair teased halfway to heaven, and from a distance I thought he was a girl. Trying real hard there, Jon-boy.

I say this so much it's probably lost its meaning, but I love the drumming in this song. It's not what I usually like - Tico just wailing away on the drums, doing his own thing, pounding like there's no tomorrow, just going crazy, pounding like...

Sorry, mind wandered. Remind me not to say "pounding like there's no tomorrow" when I'm talking about Tico, I have far too dirty a mind to keep thinking about drumming in that context. Anyway, he's not doing that crazy wailing away thing, he's just straight-up timekeeping here, but it is most definitely the backbone of the song. Take away the drumming and you'd have a nice helping of spineless wuss-rock here.

The other instrumentation is simple and kind of downplayed, and I like that. The drums pound at you, Jon sings at you, and everything else takes a background and lightens the whole thing up. As a composition, the song works beautifully.

My one big complaint is the call-and-repeat chorus gets really old, really fast. Especially at the end where it's just chorus chorus chorus WHOOOOOOAAAAAAA chorus. I like the WHOOOOOOAAAAA, the repetition not so much.

My Rating: 8/10

I think I broke my brain, all I can think about right now is "Tico pounding like there's no tomorrow". Oops.

Edited 3/25/06: Added video, deleted the sentence about how I couldn't find the video