Aloha !

I've been trying to put together a timeline when songs for the Jon's third solo record, Sex Sells and Crush were written and I feel something is off. There have been some questions in regards to It's My Life having been written by Bon Jovi or Max Martin, but I'm wondering how much of Thank You For Loving Me was written by Jon.

According to Jon, the song was written after seeing Brad Pitt say the line "Thank You For Loving Me." That movie however was released in november 1998, at a time Jon was filming for the all-time-straight-to-DVD classic Row Your Boat and wasn't focussed on writing songs at all as he's gone on record he rarely combined the two things. This would place the writing for the song somewhere in february, by the time shooting was done.

At that time period however, Westlife were recording for their debut album. I know that boyband never broke big in the U.S.A. but they were massive in large parts of the rest of the world. Their debut single, Swear It Again, was topping the U.K. charts roughly at the same time. And that song was written by Steve Mac and Wayne Hector, the same men who co-wrote Thank You For Loving Me. These men also wrote Flying Without Wings.


Follow up to these songs was What Makes A Man


If you had to wonder who wrote Thank You For Loving Me after hearing these two songs, would you mention Jon Bon Jovi?

When compiling the list of songs out there recorded either for Jon's solo project, Sex Sells or Crush it's obvious Jon's focus wasn't on writing ballads. There's only Stay, Thank You For Loving Me and Save The World. Both Stay and Save The World were written in 1997/1998 and then there's Thank You For Loving Me, sounding nothing like anything else the band had recorded up to that point.

I've no idea why Jon would have a writing session with these guys before the release of Westlife's record, both Mac and Hector had never had any major succes before Westlife. There would just have been no point in doing a session with 2 strangers with no previous succes. Steve Mac and Wayne Hector have never done any co-writing together with another artist which leads me to believe the majority of the song was written by Steve Mac and Wayne Hector and then Jon gave it a spin by adding his Thank You For Loving Me meet Joe Black idea to it.

Anyone else thinks this is plausible?

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan