Desmond Child: the man behind 100 hits
Imagine everyone in the world having heard your words but practically no one knowing who you are. It seems an odd predicament – a musician’s dream in many cases – but this is exactly the life led by Desmond Child. You may not be familiar with the name, but you certainly have heard his work. Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, Kiss’ ‘I Was Made for Lovin’ You’, even Ricky Martin’s ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ – yes, he wrote them all.
Such is the life of a songwriter, where you can be behind some of the world’s biggest-ever hits while still passing through with relative anonymity. That much is certainly true for Child, but the unique thing about him is that he has experienced both sides of the industry coin. Between being a musician himself and working with the likes of Aerosmith, Cher, and Alice Cooper, it’s fair to say he knows what a hit looks like more than most.
The 71-year-old Florida native began treading the boards of the industry back in 1975 when he helmed the band Desmond Child and Rouge alongside singers Maria Vidal, Myriam Valle, and Diana Grasselli. As a four-piece, they scored relative hits in the form of songs ‘Our Love is Insane’ and ‘Last of an Ancient Breed’, which appeared in the 1979 action film The Warriors.
But evidently, his own sonic pursuits weren’t fulfilling enough for Child, and so from there, he went on to increasingly build his profile as a budding songwriter after the outfit disbanded in 1980. He started racking up the bangers from the get-go, however, ranging from ‘Heaven’s On Fire’ by Kiss in 1984 through to ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ by Bon Jovi in 1986, before jumping straight into Aerosmith’s ‘Angel’ in 1987.
Taking a scroll through Child’s discography is like its own hilariously random walk of fame – rock gods share company with everyone from Barbra Streisand to drag queen RuPaul to the Jonas Brothers – but it’s also clear where some of his most illustrious songwriting partnerships lie. Along with all those aforementioned, prolific collaborations with the likes of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Scorpion, and Meat Loaf make up some of his most illustrious credits, speaking to a career that has never known anything but constant musical rapture.
Particularly when it comes to the latter, Child was the primary songwriting brains behind the final instalment of the trilogy, 2006’s Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose, simultaneously symbolising, both for Meat Loaf and himself, the peak of sonic iconoclasts. Ultimately being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame two years later in 2008, Child has proved time and time again that he is a cut above the rest in lyrical mastery, not showing any sign of stopping yet.
While inevitably, his credits have various statuses and not every song has been a number-one smash, it is a testament to Child’s versatility that he has turned his hand to every type of genre and artist over the past four decades and made it sing with brilliance from the page. It takes a special kind of talent to achieve that, let alone single-handedly flowing from one man.
