Roxanne, now isn't this a lovely song. Written by Sting, this song was released in Outlandos d'Amour, The Police's first album in 1978. This album was released with a very small budget, and was only recorded when Surrey Sound had free time or a band cancelled. The word "Outlandos" comes from a mix of outlaws and commandos, and "d'Amour" is French for "of love", this was proposed when the funding of the band, Miles Copeland heard Roxanne, and pictured the band in a more romantic sense. Due to the small amount of advertising, and controversial song lyrics, this song hardly received any publicity upon its release, but grew in popularity and rose to #6 on the UK's top album charts. As many of the songs by The Police, the music is fairly simplistic, with only three instruments and no track layering. This gives the song an inexplicable quality of bareness and unneeded adornment. They do a great job in this song of volume control, crashing and ebbing on the verse and chorus respectively, showing emphasis upon the verse. The subject of this song is love and prostitution. In France, Sting saw many a harlot and wrote a song about falling in love with one such cocotte, Roxanne. In this song, Sting expresses his distaste for her choice of career, and tries to convince Roxanne to find work in another field.
Runaway, one of Jon Bon's most popular, was written in 1980, and was submitted into a local songwriting contest. After doing this, he was told to assemble a band in order to perform it. He hastily got a group together, and they were known as Jon Bongiovi and the Rest. This group was not the lineup for Bon Jovi, but rather a temporary group created to perform this immensely popular song. Richie Sambora caught up with Jon after a show, and requested for a position as the lead guitarist. Jon gave him a shot, and when they next met, Richie had the material down, he continued to become the official lead guitarist, and Bon Jovi was born. Released in their 1983 album "Bon Jovi", this song was their first hit. It became a huge sensation in the summer of 1983, and hit number thirty-four on the US Billboard top 100. This song has a very haunting intro, which ties in well with the lyrics, which are about neglect and prostitution. It's about a girl who has a father that gives her no attention, so she resorts to fleeing from that frontier, toward men that treat her the same way. From lack of attention and contact, she turns to prostitution, in order to please others, not thinking of her own distaste for how she lives.
