Songfacts®:

• This is the first single from American rock band Bon Jovi's 11th studio album, The Circle.
• Jon Bon Jovi and guitarist Richie Sambora wrote this anthemic upbeat rallying cry. It follows a similar theme of defiance and independence of many other Bon Jovi singles such as "Everyday," "Have a Nice Day" and "It's My Life."
• This song, along with the rest of the album was produced by John Shanks, who also worked with the band on 2005's Have A Nice Day and 2007's Lost Highway.
• Sambora revealed to MusicRadar why the guitar break on the radio version is different to that on the album. He explained: "When I recorded the solo to that song, I played a very melodic, kind of Beatles-esque break. That was the mood I was in. As soon as the song got leaked to radio, people went crazy, sending e-mails and Twittering and everything: 'We love the song, but what's with that solo? We want a rippin', burnin' Richie Sambora solo. So I said to Jon, 'Hey, do you want me to change it? We got time. And John was like, 'Sure. Go lay down another solo and we'll drop it in the song on the album.' So that's what I did."
• Jon Bon Jovi told The Daily Mail October 23, 2009 that this song is "about working people picking themselves up by their bootstraps in hard times."
• Sambora described to MusicRadar the writing sessions between Bon Jovi and himself for The Circle as "extremely easy, prolific and probably the most fun we've ever had creatively. I went to Jon's house with nothing and before you knew it we had something like 28 songs. Hey, when you're on a roll, you're on a roll. You don't question it, you just keep going till you're done."
• Sambora was asked by MusicRadar to describe their demoing process. He said bluntly, "We don't. Meaning, we don't do these elaborate sketches of songs with this part and that part. It's a time-waster." Instead, the duo "just grab two acoustic guitars, sit down in front of our old-school cassette record or an iPhone and we play the songs. We're of the belief that you can't polish bulls--t," he added. "You have to remember, Jon and I have been doing this for 25 years. We know when we have something great and when we have something sub-par. To us, when we write a song, we knock it out and then we bring it to the band. When you go into a studio and you press 'Record,' that's a different story. That's when you start sprinkling all the fairy dust on the tracks. But that should come only after you have something that's unbreakable!"
• The Circle debuted at #1 on the Japanese Oricon chart, giving Bon Jovi their fifth chart-topping album on that tally. In doing so they tied with Mariah Carey and Simon & Garfunkel for having the most #1 albums in Japan as a Western artist.