Undivided

The opening track on Bon Jovi's Bounce album celebrates how Americans united in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the country. Jon Bon Jovi, who was in his New Jersey home with bandmate Richie Sambora when he watched the World Trade Center's Twin Towers get hit by hijacked passenger planes, explained the song's message of solidarity goes beyond 9/11. He told Cosmopolis in 2002: "In our storytelling, what we try to do is blur the lines between first, second, and third person so that it's me, you, and we. And in doing so, you find a lyric that makes it make sense. And so the chorus for 'Undivided' perhaps can be considered universal, and not just the US and not just patriotic, but thematically having to do with we as one planet. Wise up already, step back and take a look because people in the Gaza Strip are having more consistent suffering than we had in New York and yet to a great degree people watch TV and consider it something that's not their problem because it's far away or fighting anywhere in the world or our problems are not just ours as Americans but the world's problems and we were able to look at that head on and write about it."

The opening verse launches into the trauma of the attacks and recalls the agony of losing loved ones. The band wasn't sure if the lyrics would be too much for listeners to handle, especially just one year after the tragedy, but ultimately thought it was necessary. "We had to be to the point with a lyric like that," Bon Jovi explained. "If you're going to step out on a limb and talk about what happened on 9/11, it better be pinpointed and yet not be so personal that other people can't relate to it. It can't be just your view of what happened. It has to be something that's universal. That was the idea."