This House Is Not For Sale (2016) - Post Album Release Discussion

Count me in too. I loved it since the first video of it live. It's not like previous ballads, like The Fighter. Couldn't get into that one.

Agree, living with the ghost is excellent

Love Scars too. It’s the song that to me exemplifies why this album works: you can feel they put great care into creating beautiful meaningful lyrics that may sound vaguely poetic but are very real, paint this scene you don’t only imagine but feel, and at the same time are devoid of the pretentiousness that has plagued many of their “emotional” songs lately which ironically made them bland, instantly forgettable. If it cames from the heart, it will never sound insincere. That should be a sticker on the album cover btw

It didn’t grab me immediately live because the delivery was good but I thought it needed more emotion. Album version it’s better but like many have said, you can feel Richie’s absence. It does need more backing vocals but not anyone’s, it needs Richie. That made it difficult for me to fully embrace the song until it hit me, and it hit me hard when I got it: this could perfectly be one of the Grey Summer songs. It has the same melancholy, the same fighting for hope among the despair, the same bittersweet feeling. It is an ode to the art of creating a song, which is admittedly one of Jon’s passions, but you can clearly feel how much of a toll it can be for him. Both the process itself and the emotional cost of putting himself out there and feeling vulnerable specially because he was in a bad place, probably worse than he's letting on.

Nope I'm into it . I think people tend to be slower about getting into songs like this . They want more immediacy at the outset, myself included . Once Devil's In The Temple finishes I can get restless depending what I'm doing . It has nothing to do with song quality, but rather the mood I'm in at the moment The last half of the album begs for more patience and calm

For the record, Real Love is so much better than Blind Love IMO.

Absolutely agreed! Blind Love never really worked for me whereas I love Real Love!

Totally agee. The last half of the album contains some superb slow burners which is another reason why I see this album blasting through my speakers for a long, long time.
Great post!!

I heard him say that in the promo shows, too; but I just can't make that connection at all.

When I first heard it, a lot of the lyrics made me think he was referring to Richie (even if one ignores the King of Swing nickname).

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
All the people came to hear him speak (play) from miles around.
They hung on every word (note), a song in every sound
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
He touched the sky to light up all the stars.
He could snap his fingers and catch lightning in a jar.
I am you and you are me; and we are who we are.
We’ll touch the sky and light up all the stars.

(This reminded me of the early shows with Richie's long solos and lightning-fast riffs - like 'In and Out of Love'.)

All hail the king whose castle’s falling down,
The paper prince who wears a cardboard crown.
Poor man has his money; rich man has his gold.
All hail the king whose fortune is his soul.

(A lot of people seem to think Richie expected that he would set the world on fire when he did his solo albums and compete on the same level as Bon Jovi; or was somehow trying to prove he was better than the band. I don't agree; but if that’s the case, then things don't seem to be going so well for him right now. At best, it's up and down. So it would appear that “his castle’s falling down”; certainly in comparison to “this house” that’s not for sale. The “paper prince/cardboard crown” makes me think of the “vagabond king/Styrofoam crown” in TD, which in turn reminds me of the “old man on the corner” in Harlem Rain. I always wondered if Richie didn’t fear that would he would one day end up that way... The “whose fortune is his soul” recalls how, in the later interviews during 2014, Richie would say that being a part of Ava's life right now was better currency than money, or something like that - can't recall exactly - plus, I think he just wants the freedom to do his own thing, regardless of whether it meets anyone’s expectations or whether he makes millions doing it or not.)

He climbed the clouds to heaven’s highest hill.
When you get that high, the earth below looks just like a blue pill.
Gave wind to all his horses, and to all his men good will,
When he climbed down from heaven’s highest hill.

(With the band, he certainly climbed to the “highest hill”; and “gave wind to all his horses” made me think of his love of horse racing. Besides being involved in a lot of charities, he has repeatedly said that he loves the band and wishes them nothing but the best, so he gave “to all his men good will, when he climbed down from heaven’s highest hill” and left the band to pursue other goals.)

I’ll stop right there, because I refuse to even think about the last verse. Not touching that with a 10’ pole…

Those are just my thoughts. Maybe Jon is saying something much different, something that relates more closely to the SK, and I'm just missing the point.

Whether I’m reading too much between the lines or not, I love the song, as well as all the others on this album. I won’t even try to deny that I miss Richie, especially in the vocals, but there's also no denying that the band and Shanks did a fantastic job on this album (not that I ever expected less than that from them).

I'm probably going to get crucified for even suggesting this, but does anybody else think Jon sounds like Neil Diamond in Goodnight NY? That's not a slam, btw; I've always liked ND. To me, this song would have fit perfectly on The Jazz Singer, and when Jon sings "Goodnight" that long 'iiii' just sounds so much like ND. There’s another one where I think he sounds like ND as well, but I can’t remember what it is.

I love, love, love I Will Drive You Home. And the vocals at the end are what sets it apart for me. Although it's a totally different sound, there’s still some reason it reminds me of the way Queen used '39 as an intro to Too Much Love here:
https://youtu.be/iobYIeugRZA

It sounds to me like the background vocalists in the band - a good non-distinguishable blend. Jon's voice is usually very distinctive, so if he's singing there, he did a great job of blending because I can't pick him out.


Not to go off-topic, but just a quick aside here, with a suggestion for others who might be experiencing trouble with the pop-ups:

It's been beyond horrible! Early this morning, I tried just to catch up from where I left off last night, and my phone soon had 43 pages opened from pop-ups by the time I read through this thread alone, some of which would take me back 3 or 4 pages so I'd have to repeat the process and open even MORE pop-ups.

I was finally so frustrated I stopped and figured out how to subscribe. I had been putting off doing that - partly out of stubbornness and partly because I WOULD have to figure it out.

It's not that I objected to a paid subscription. I didn't even know there was one until the pop-ups became such a problem a while back, and at that time it felt like I was being blackmailed into paying for the service to avoid annoying ads, and I resented it.

But I gotta say, the 10 or 12 bucks I paid this morning has already been well worth it. I haven't had a single pop-up on my phone since I requested it. So if you use your phone a lot to check in here, it may be something you may want to look into.

I agree 100%.