Aloha !

This album tanked because it's terrible and unlistenable.

Why would anyone want to listen to Jon Bon Jovi sing about stuff you hear about every day without offering any real insights or emotions behind it? He carefully dances around most issues and refuses to take a stand in the songs. There's no emotion, no pain in there. The songs are just... there. He might as well have sung about the weather forecast, it'd have been just as interesting. And so he did by writing Let It Rain and coming up with the same, overused metaphors.

The dreadful vocals, boring instrumentation, dodgy lyrics and subjects everyone's discussed to death are all reasons why no one cares. Even the one standout song is a remake of a song he's refused to do at 99% of every Bon Jovi show since 2000. People interested in those kind of songs have long abandoned ship and who can blame them, really? The original stands miles above this supposed masterpiece a lot of people on Jovitalk claim it is.

Jon's had a chance to dive into the gun ownership issue but carefully dances around it, refusing to take a clear stand and refusing to open the debate he sings about. His one shot at decent promo was gone the moment he went on to sing about gun ownership and Black Lives Matters. They're issues most people from both camps refuse to understand because they're not willing to listen to either side of the story and have made up their minds, as has Jon Bon Jovi.

2020 is a testament as to how Jon Bon Jovi is utterly incapable of writing topical songs. It's the prime example of why the songs "with a message" have never, ever worked. He just doesn't own up to what he writes about and if he refuses to stand behind the songs, why should people be interested in what he has to say?

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan