jon's shrugging when signing tough songs

Maybe a better word is effortlessly and it's only some of the older songs. I think most of the post 2000 songs he's fine with. I do think not smoking (or maybe cutting back as none of us know for sure) has definitely helped his voice but he's even admitted he doesn't know what the hell he and Richie were thinking writing some of the songs in such a high key. A song like Always is a tough song to sing for even singers much younger than him. The fact he's still trying it (and regained some confidence he didn't seem to have on some previous tours), I give him credit for even if more times than not it sounds strained.

I am with you in this one, and I admit to be very critical of Jon in many issues, but not the one about his voice. I don't care how he sounds, because I am not a music teacher waiting to give him a grade. I see the times he makes the funny faces in the effort to hit some notes, I appreciate he tries at least, but at the end I would never say I am not going to more gigs, because Jon's voice is not the same. To me that's just dumb, everything in life deteriorates at some point, but as long as it works is OK in my book.

I think it's pretty obvious. The shrugging and funny faces it's because it's terribly hard for him to reach the notes so he has to force them out tensing his neck. It's just because he can't hit them properly anymore. It doesn't have anything to do with technique I think.

i agree, Jon is trying to do songs like always and bed of roses because he is getting back his confidence.

Aloha !

They wrote them in such a high key because when they wrote them they could nail them. When Jon sang Always for the first time in 1994 he had no problem with it. A year later he already struggled with a few parts of the song.

Nowadays they claim to write songs in such a key that fits Jon's voice but when HAND had just been released there was no way Jon was able to hit the chorus in the original key. Even when it was downtuned he struggled with it, and he still does. He's never sounded as sharp on the studio version. The same goes for Any Other Day.

It's not a matter of writing in a certain key. It's a matter of training your voice so you can actually hit that key time after time, instead of blaming it on age.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Very good point.

good point indeed. it's like, he nails it in the studio over a million takes and auto-tune but doing it in on a daily basis becomes complicated. actually, there a few VERY DECENET performances of HAND out there

one thing is for sure. jon no longer sounds like a teenager, for better or worse. I actually like his natural timbre now. if you listen to his performance during the MSG dvd in 2008, he nails every song. perhaps because it was being recorded and also because the tour was coming to and end so he could stretch it a bit more, which I hope he does too in Lisbon :P

That's about it, though. Since 2000, there haven't been a large amount of songs that are better live, at least vocally. He hasn't ever, or will ever be able to nail HAND. Or IML. It's just the truth. It makes you wonder their thinking when they made these big super choruses.

Listen to the vocal level of songs between SWW, and then LH. Some of the highest notes from LH are just mid-range notes on SWW. Like Seb said, they wrote for what Jon could do at the time. For better or for worse, it happened. I'm sure if they could've looked into the future to see the state of Jon's voice in recent years, or even in the 90's, they would've restructured the vocal structures. But nobody has that superpower, so they didn't.

I think it is also a style of song situation ....Bon Jovi have made its success and power on that style with high loud screaming voice and ultra powerfull songs ... the guys have now the 2 choices to go acoustic-ish or country style with NO WORK on the voice songs that are rather not demanding live or the grandiose chant that need a grandiose magnificent majestic voice (the magic voice of always for example) ... Jon and the band know Jon cannot sing those songs anymore but he can do it with technology and tools in the studio but impossible to replicate live .. the thing is what to do to make more flat songs that Jon can sing but that don't have the touch that makes you sing out loud or the song that moves your stomach up side down that Jon cannot sing live ... 5i Am or BrokenPromiseland for example ... those songs that Jon think undoable live )

must be tough for Jon to stand in between ... easy to sing songs are lacking of POWER and the other songs those typical jovi songs are now un-singable