2020: The New Album

That's a good point, for an album called 2020 to release it a few months shy of half-way through the year is silly.

That's comparable to "Unbroken" being released on Nov. 1 and the tour being announced on Jan 15; except now they're saying "Unbroken" wasn't the first single from the album. (Not sure how that works. It's from the album, an official video was released, it was on Spotify, and for sale on Amazon - so how is it not the first single?)

The Ellen show included a second release from THINFS ("Knockout") just before tickets went on sale Oct 10. Following that pattern, there should have been a second release from 2020 around the time the tour was announced. According to the Pollstar articles, that was going to be "The Story of Love", scheduled to drop in January, which would have tracked with the tour announcement on the 15th and the tickets going on sale Jan 21/24. All of it would have coincided with the promotion surrounding the Rutgers SK Grand (Re)Opening on Jan 22-23 that Jon had announced shortly before the Pollstar articles were published.

Somewhere in the interim, though, the "first" single was changed from "The Story of Love" to "Limitless"; and, since then, there's been no word about the release of another single or the album. So it looks to me like Jon and Azoff initially planned to follow the same timeline as THINFS; but something threw a monkey wrench into their plans.

It was never the first single because it was always promoted in association with To Be Of Service. It was never promoted as "the first single from the upcoming album" I don't think and any mention of it was in correlation with the new album.

I think you're right though, something changed. The timing was too close together to when the tour was announced, Rutgers, the Today Show and the rough period the new song was going to come out. I mean obviously it was the lead single changing which probably meant scrapping all the marketing and graphics and appearances etc. It might also have effected the formats they were going to promote it to radio wise.

Jon emphasized around the time that it was a song for a side project that "probably was gonna be on the album as well." He had given a couple of interviews / press around that, so if it was the first single, why wouldn't he just say it?
It's similar to 2012 when Not Running Anymore dropped late that year and was on WAN as well. No one regarded that as the first single either even though it also was music composed for a film (this time around a documentary).

I think the biggest difference is Not Running Anymore wasn't on the proper album. The fact that, last we heard, the new album has ten songs and one of them was released in correlation to a documentary is an odd choice but so much time has passed I really think we'll get a standard twelve song album. Who knows, maybe Unbroken got knocked off of it since then.

It's a bit comparable to Reunion and THINFS, but only a bit. Don't think that correlated with anything, it was just a side project song that made the main album, which was strange enough for me. But since it's Jon & friends now, he might as well do what he wants, I guess...

That's a good comparison, yeah. Was Reunion written for that specific event?

Yeah, for that speech he gave at that university (was it also Rutgers?). And then he included it on the album, which was awkward (even if the song isn't that bad).

I think Jon just realised that Bon Jovi are a nostalgia act by now and so decided to release the album called 2020 in the year 2021 to emphasize his new realization.

Oh Gawd, that made me laugh real hard! haha It's funny, though. Was talking to a friend just today and said Jon surely seems less invested now. And all we get are Dave's musicals and Jesse's wine. Talking about one of the greatest American rock'n'roll bands much, huh?