Because We Can Tour, 2013 - Song Tally

Springsteen actually has more top 10 hits than Bon Jovi does but he also has 6 more studio albums to draw from.

The thing is, Lost Highway was played at all but 5 shows but the song didn't even chart in the U.S. Neither did Whole Lot of Leaving. We Got it Going On wasn't even a single. So the excuse that there is little variety because they have so many hits they have to play doesn't really fly.

My point was more Springsteen hasn't conditioned his fans to expect the big songs that are on the classic radio all the time currently. There are tours where Bruce doesn't play the big songs and Bon Jovi don't have that luxury because imagine the backlash if they didn't do Wanted? Prayer? Bad Name?

EDIT: I completely agree there's no need to be playing singles that didn't do well tour after tour after tour though.

Pearl Jam have played 152 songs on their Lightning Bolt North Amercian Tour 2013 on 25 shows. They have also played some cover songs. http://www.setlist.fm/stats/pearl-ja...ning+Bolt+Tour

F*ck I love Pearl Jam.

Aloha !

In 2.000 there wasn't much backlash when the band never played Always or This Ain't A Love Song. When I'll Be There For You was dropped. Or when Bed Of Roses was rarely played. Or Born To Be My Baby was mostly ignored in 1995 and 1996. Or that Everyday hasn't been played much since 2005. All have been huge hits in either Europe or America yet somehow they can be dropped and Bon Jovi gets away with it.

Bon Jovi are playing a lot of singles, but about 10 songs in every set are songs everybody knows. The rest of the set mostly consists of either tanked singles, poor album cuts or new songs no one cares for. There's about 5 uptempo songs that work regardless if they were a hit or not (Raise Your Hands, Blood On Blood) but that's about it.

Just because Springsteen doesn't have a lot of hits, doesn't mean he doesn't try to cater towards the average fan. He still plays about 10 songs at roughly every show, which is the same as Bon Jovi does. A Springsteen fan knows that Dancing In The Dark, Born To Run, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out and Badlands will get played, and expects them to be, just like an average Bon Jovi concert visitor expects Prayer, Wanted, It's My Life and Bad Medicine.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

The thing is, it would be so easy to make the setlist so much better, without sacrificing much for the casuals/diehards/Jon.

If they were to tour again, the foolproof standard setlist (from my point of view) would look something like...

1. Raise Your Hands/Let It Rock
2. You Give Love a Bad Name
3. *lead single*
4. In These Arms/Everyday
5. That's What The Water Made Me/Just Older
6. It's My Life
7. Love's The Only Rule/Beautiful World
8. Whole Lot Of Leavin'/Lost Highway/We Weren't Born to Follow/Because We Can
9. *new song*
10. Someday I'll Be Saturday Night/Something For the Pain
11. Superman Tonight/I'm With You/Thorn In My Side
12. *new slow song*
13. Bed of Roses/I'll Be There For You
14. Diamond Ring/(It's Hard) Letting You Go/Make a Memory
15. Wanted Dead Or Alive
16. We Got It Going On/One Wild Night/Get Ready
17. Bad Medicine
18. Blood on Blood/Happy Now/In & Out of Love/Undivided
19. Born to Be My Baby/Lay Your Hands On Me
20. Keep the Faith

21. Runaway/Blaze of Glory
22. Have a Nice Day
23. Who Says You Can't Go Home/I'll Sleep When I'm Dead/Captain Crash
24. Always
25. Livin' on a Prayer

You've got the hits, the album cuts that actually work live, and enough of those songs to keep Jon happy. There'd be enough songs in rotation that would prevent each setlist becoming stale.

That's 47 songs on rotation on the standard setlist alone and not taking into account audibles and rarities. This tour the band played 56 songs in total.

If you were to pick the worst choice from each option in the setlist above you would still get a decent setlist.

I disagree. The worst choice from each option is boring as hell.

Actually, even the best choice isn't much better.

Can't be bothered to count (and sorry if I missed it) but what is the total number of songs? Regardless of Springsteen and Pearl Jam - that still is a damn impressive total number of songs to be played. Actually, other than the two bands above, is there any other band capable of selling out a stadium to play even close to as many songs? Surely none of my favourite stadium bands (AC/DC, Maiden, Aerosmith, Scorpions)

56 band/JBJ solo songs in 103 shows. That's impressive?