I know this is a stretch, especially because you're all probably sick of the Bon Jovi vs. U2 comparisons. It's like comparing apples and oranges, I get it. But can we put that to the side for a bit, and constructively talk about them both, as they are of similar caliber as far as the world stage goes.


U2 have released 2 bad back to back albums in the past 10 years. No Line on the Horizon and Songs of Innocence, while having moments of goodness, (ie. Moment of Surrender or Raised by Wolves) were not that good.

Bon Jovi have released 2 really bad albums back to back. (What About Now & This House is Not For Sale). I get some people really like the latter, but for everyone else, it's pretty bad. Even look at these articles:

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/bon-j...worst-to-best/ (this is the one I feel actually understands Bon Jovi. These Days is ranked at number 1, but What About Now and THINFS is ranked at 15 and 14 respectively.)

or even this article that lists them at 12 and 14.

https://www.ranker.com/list/best-bon...list/reference

I hate that I have to include these, but of course the inevitable chants of "THINFS is really good and you're wrong" will come, and I'm really just not here to argue about that.


Continuing on, I have listened to the new U2 album a dozen times and I fell in love with it. Like Bon Jovi, I had lost faith in new U2 material. I still will see them live, am still interested in how they sound, and will still follow them. However, I thought the day of new good material was at its end. Then they released Songs of Experience, and I was blown away. Not only was the sound and production incredibly modern, but it still sounded like U2.

The bridge of "The Little Things That Give You Away" literally made me cry the first time I listened to it. I really believed the lyrics, and I felt that Bono's voice singing about his mortality really meant it. I found my voice in that song too. Not only that, but it was produced SO WELL. Yes, there are probably 2 keyboards and 4 or 5 layered guitars, but it worked so incredibly well. Each note is heard, and nothing distracted from each other.

However, this is a Bon Jovi topic, and I do not want to distract from that. The last time I felt that kind of emotion from a new Bon Jovi song was when I first heard Any Other Day from the Lost Highway album. While some people will never like that album because of the genre, it still holds a place in my heart because despite the genre, they wrote some damn good songs.

Songs of Experience is being received incredibly well everywhere. People love it. And not just the typical Rolling Stone Magazine fanboys who gush over everything U2 piss on. My friends love it. I posted a facebook status about it, and I'm having conversations with people my age and younger who are listening to a U2 album in its entirety for the first time and actually liking it. I have a friend who hasn't even listened to the Joshua Tree that claimed to me today that this was her favorite album of this entire year.

You don't have to like Songs of Experience. And you can even love This House is Not For Sale. My question is this: Do you think Bon Jovi have the capabilities of releasing content that a millennial will actually like, given no prior context? The fact of the matter is that there is relevancy from this new U2 project, but whether you like it or not, the world just didn't care about THINFS. And I think Jon knows that, too. Do you think it's possible to release an album that actually matters? Or that actually sounds good and is produced well? Or is Bon Jovi destined to be a band that is known for nothing past Make A Memory?