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I do think Jon has started copying more sounds the older he's got. I'm not saying he didn't do it before Bounce or whenever but I do think more and more songs sound similar to others than they did back in 80s and 90s.

I could definitely name a fair few from the 80s and 90s that have resemblances to others but I could name even more from Bounce onwards.



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Yeah I think we're saying the same thing here. It got worse with Shanks but it also got more noticeable.

There's a small nagging part of me that still doesn't understand why we give him a pass for doing it during Destination Anywhere and beyond, an album we hold in high regard, and mad at him for doing it now, you know? I guess if it's about the age range, sure I totally get it. But copping off popular things to seem more relevant isn't as frowned upon if we collectively all like the end product I think.

I think the increase in pretentiousness over the years - "my peers are Dylan, Petty and Springsteen" - makes ripping off trendy stuff to finance a football team seem a lot more hypocritical.

Well....I have no idea about production. So that's why I'm asking: Is it really the production that makes the songs sound like artist xyz or is it much more the way the songwriter writes it?
To me a producer has a hand in which instrument you can hear (or not), how prominent a mix is and how clear the sound comes out. But I can't imagine that a producer makes Livin' On A Prayer sound like AC/DC while the other one makes it sound like Soul Asylum and a third one makes it sound like the Backstreets Boys. To me that depends on the song, the hooks, the melody, the harmonics the songwriter writes. But please, correct me if I'm wrong.

About the change of Bon Jovi music from the 80s through the 90s up to the 2000s I already wrote a posting in a German forum about a year ago.
I'm lazy so I just send my German text through the Google translater. If something isn't clear, please feel free to ask:

The impression I got from putting all the tours together for my website is the change Jon has in terms of performance and music.

Sure, from 1984 to 1987 it was the struggle for a breakthrough. The shows were very very energetic and you could see the unconditional will to succeed.

From 1988 - 2001, New Jersey to One Wild Night, they wanted to prove to the world that none of this was a coincidence, but that they are rightly on a par with the Stones and U2.
Still energetic shows, but above all the feeling that the music meant everything and that at the moment when song xy is played, there is nothing more important than this song.

At about Bounce it started that the band (Jon) were sure about their status. The comeback with Crush was more than successful, the audience in the USA came back and a mass of new fans was won.
From then on I slowly got the feeling that music is no longer everything for Jon, but a means to an end: To earn money, for the applause (ego) and on good days for your own leisure time.
If the mood wasn't right, you could feel it very clearly in the shows.
There were still very good performances - but this absolute feeling that it's all about the song was something that many of the performances no longer brought with them.
Which supports the impression: up to and including Bounce, every album was promoted with acoustic performances without end. In the mid-90s in the UK the band simply sat in public parks or the windows of record stores and played acoustic 5-10 songs, during Jon's Destination Anywhere times he played an incredible number of acoustic shows for radio stations and universities and at a similar level (albeit not quite as numerous) it was made for Crush and Bounce. After Bounce, I can't remember a decent acoustic promo show (the unspeakable 2007 unplugged performance doesn't count).
I had also written elsewhere that Jon performed as a young man up to and including the Have A Nice Day Tour. After that we only got to see the elder statesman.

From Lost Highway it was, to put it bluntly, then completely over. The teleprompter was finally introduced (after a failed first attempt in 1996) and has remained to this day.
With that it was over that texts could be learned and therefore also with rarities could be performed "hands-free" for the song. Technology was relied on, and more rarities than ever before were played for the heart of the fan. But the heart and soul of the songs have been lost more and more because the lyrics were presented standing at the microphone stand and read off the screen.
More and more shows were played on autopilot. Yes, Jon has always had the same slogans - Dominik has just uploaded a Slippery show on his YT channel that announces Social Disease with "is there a doctor in the house".
But from 2008 and even more extreme in 2011, almost every gesture, every speech (see The More Things Change) was almost exactly identical.
I also find the scene from the When We Were Beautiful Documentary, where Jon backstage in Central Park (I think) Mike Rew asks whether the audience is more fans or casuals, revealing. Mike replied "casuals" and Jon's reaction was that he couldn't pull off his "cheap tricks". I find the scene incredibly revealing. It is no longer the spontaneity of rock & roll, performing from the gut, the affair of the heart that determines the action, but calculation to evoke certain reactions.

With What About Now 2013 at the latest, the topic of money came to the fore more than ever.

And with This House, the motivation has changed a little again, but only in the beginning for the better.
Because I really think House was very, very subordinate to money. The focus was again on proving - that he can have a number 1 album and a new successful tour even without Richie. So the drive was to prove it again - similar to 1988-2001, but from a different motivation - and applause for his ego. Every time the sound goes wrong, he smiles in embarrassment. He knows best himself that he shouldn't be on stage with his voice anymore, but doesn't want to miss out on applause. Similar to a politician who cannot live without power.

So in a nutshell, the change in motivation from breakthrough -> prove yourself -> money + ego + pastime -> prove Richie + ego

Some things are of course a bit exaggerated and a lot reads much more negative than the respective era actually was.
But if I took one from the compilation and analysis of all the tours and their shows, then it is this!

So to break it down once again: Up until DA, Jon wrote a song for the sake of the song. With the beginning of Crush he mostly wrote a song for the hope of having a hit.

He changed, definitely. I think Semigoodlooking absolutely nailed it when he said that Jon has been catering to the market created off the back of IML for the last 20 years. That's the biggest problem.

Nothing has really changed other than the quality declining. Lost Highway was probably the biggest departure from anything else post-2000 and that's why, for me at least, its the best album since These Days.


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Faceman, listen to the original Livin' On A Prayer, the 94 version and the TLFR version. Production, when it includes arrangement, will shape the sonics and style of a song. Not the song itself - the acoustic '89 performance of Prayer would always have sounded the same. But whether you have keyboards in the mix, drums soaked in reverb, acoustic guitars with a twang or crunchy riffage... that CAN be influenced by the production. Can. To a degree. Prayer could have just as well been arranged as a country tune. It was never going to sound like AC/DC, for the lack of a bluesy riff.

But yeah, I disagree about the producers being the reason that Bon Jovi suddenly sounded like the Backstreet Boys and no longer like Survivor. They picked different co-writers, wrote different songs, were different people. And chased different trends. Yeah, they also hired different producers, but... Bruce Fairbarn was originally going to produce Crush. It would not have sounded like Slippery even then. Just like Kiss's Psycho Circus did not sound like Slippery.

Of course, Bon Jovi have always done it. There's a track on the first album that's almost completely ripped off Laura Branigan, for example.
But for the first 15 years or so, they looked at what was currently popular and incorporated these elements into their sound. Sometimes a little more subtle, sometimes a little less. But it always sounded like Bon Jovi.
Similar story for DA. Yeah, there's a lot of then-popular Britpop arrangements in there, but Jon was breathing that music during his many stints in London in the mid-90's and inspired by it to make it his own. More or less (maybe with some exceptions around LH), this was the last time that was the case. Afterwards, it seems like he listened to the popular trends and tried to figure out how to write/arrange certain songs to appeal to the mainstream audience.

All of that actually wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't such a hypocrite about it. Always talking about: "We realized with being who we are and not trying to be anyone else, you sink or swim on that. Don't chase something you're not 'cause you're gonna be a day late." (Ultimate Albums, 1998 )
And with each album, he repeats that tale in some way or another while (by now) sometimes blatantly ripping off current sounds. Does he really think his audience is that stupid? (going by some social media posts, it is...)
Never been a fan of George Michale, but I think it was brought up as a reference here a long time ago. He also very obviously took stuff from others, but he simply was honest about it and went "yeah, I incorporate these things if I like them."
If Jon simply was honest about saying that he's interested in having songs that are sonically similar to what's currently trending, he'd get much less slack for it in the long run.

I mean, it worked for Bowie and Madonna.

Yeah, I'm with you on this!

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What songs do you think Bowie stole/copied?



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