Some songs have secret second lives. Bonnie Tyler’s “If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)” is one of them. Released in March 1986 as the third single from Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire, it was written by Desmond Child and produced by Jim Steinman — the same volcanic team behind her biggest hits. It charted modestly around the world and became her final American chart entry. But its real fame lies in what happened next: Child took the song’s chorus, rewrote it, and turned it into “You Give Love a Bad Name” — the single that made Bon Jovi superstars.
The story starts with Steinman’s ambition. For Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire, the follow-up to 1983’s Faster Than the Speed of Night, Steinman wanted to push Tyler further — bigger, stranger, more theatrical. He brought in Desmond Child, the New York songwriter with a gift for anthemic hooks, and asked him to write two songs for the album: “Lovers Again” and “If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man).” Steinman’s brief for the latter was characteristically grandiose: he wanted a song about androgyny, about blurred lines and swapped roles, with verses that hit like Tina Turner, a middle section with the wiry tension of the Police, U2, or Hall & Oates, and a chorus with the widescreen punch of Bruce Springsteen.
Child delivered exactly that — a song that changes shape as it moves, verses prowling low before the chorus explodes. Tyler recorded it with Steinman producing, and it was released in the United States on March 12, 1986, on Columbia, with “Under Suspicion” on the B-side. The single’s chart run tells the story of an artist whose commercial moment was shifting: number 6 in France (where it sold more than 250,000 copies and earned a Silver disc), number 11 in Finland, 16 in Switzerland, 20 in New Zealand, 30 on the European Hot 100, 36 in West Germany, 77 in Australia, 77 in America, 87 in Canada, and 78 in Britain. France loved it; almost everywhere else it was a minor entry. In America, it would be Tyler’s last chart hit.
The French success is worth lingering on. A number 6 hit and a Silver disc for a quarter-million sales made “If You Were a Woman” one of Tyler’s biggest continental European singles of the decade — a reminder that her career had always been larger outside the English-speaking world than many American or British listeners realize. The song’s drama, its gender-flipping premise, its sheer size — all of it played well to audiences who had embraced her most theatrical instincts from the start.
Then came the afterlife. Child has told the story himself: after the Tyler single underperformed, he recycled its chorus — the same structure, the same lift — into a new song he was writing with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora. That song was “You Give Love a Bad Name,” released later in 1986, and it went to number one in America, transforming Bon Jovi from a working rock band into a global phenomenon. Listening to the two choruses back to back is a masterclass in songwriting craft: the DNA is unmistakable, the same melodic architecture carrying completely different words. Tyler’s loss became rock history’s gain.
The song kept moving through other hands. Robin Beck — herself a one-hit wonder with “First Time” — covered it on her 1989 album Trouble or Nothin’, with Child himself producing, closing the circle. RuPaul recorded it for 1996’s Foxy Lady. And in 2020, Ava Max borrowed its melody for “Kings & Queens,” introducing the tune to a generation that had never heard of Bonnie Tyler or Desmond Child. Few songs can claim three separate lives across four decades; this one can. Tyler herself returned to it, re-recording it for 2004’s Simply Believe and a 2005 EP, and performing it on the Bonnie on Tour concert release recorded in Zaragoza in 2005.
The video was pure Steinman. He wrote the scenario and co-directed it, and the result earned six nominations at the 1986 Billboard Video Music Conference — a testament to the ambition poured into every frame. Like everything Steinman touched in this period, it was operatic, overwrought, and completely committed. Whether or not the single sold, nobody could accuse the team of thinking small.
There is a quieter irony in the song’s chart story that deserves a final word. “If You Were a Woman” was Tyler’s last American hit, yet the chorus she carried would conquer America months later wearing different clothes. Pop history is full of such handoffs — songs that fail in one voice and triumph in another — but rarely is the paper trail this clear. Child never hid the recycling; he has discussed it openly, and the two records remain linked in every serious account of his career. For Tyler, the episode is neither tragedy nor triumph but something more interesting: proof that she stood at the creation of a sound that would define the late 1980s, even if someone else got to take it to number one.
What to listen for
“If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)” sits at a strange, rich intersection: the end of Tyler’s American chart career, the birth of Bon Jovi’s imperial phase, and a thread that runs through Robin Beck, RuPaul, and Ava Max. It is a reminder that in pop music, a song is never really finished — it just waits for its next singer.