There is literally no room for a 2022 tour. Basically everyone will be out there, including Bruce that will be announced today.

Forget about stadium availability, not only for 2022 but in same cases for 2023 as well. With all the 2020/21 rescheduled shows + new tours they would have to opt for smaller stadiums and markets, which is something Jon is certainly not willing to do...

It's actually kind of sad for someone who has been bragging about "the biggest grossing tour" up to 2013 to wait for literally no one else to tour in order to be able to shift tickets.

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I can’t really see them selling out stadiums any more. Not sure if Jon’s ego can take that so he my decide enough is enough, especially considering the state of his voice!

I'd wager to say the absence of live music, touring, people seeing acts they never got around to seeing and people missing their fav bands, the band is in a pretty good position. The biggest competition is booked venues, not declining interest and a failing voice. They still have the back catalogue of hits to fall back on as they've done for the past decade.

I'm not too sure about the scale though. Aside from the "you don't hear that live, Jon's voice isn't really noticeable" fanboy camp on some boards, there was a good amount of displeased casuals last time when we left the stadium and took the train back. I mean, really a lot of things you picked up like "what happened? this was so much better in 2011" and the likes. Sure, they won't have to go to little arenas with 3,000 fans. But I'm seriously questioning how long they can hold up the big stadiums like Munich or Wembley. Since it's not us selling them out.

There is nothing firm that we know, but I feel like everything is ready for next year, I think there will be a possible new album (or new songs) and a tour. It is only a matter of time to be confirmed. I think that Halloween show that was canceled was going to reveal some of what's to come next year.

I think had their not been a pandemic and shortage of live shows things would trickle downwards as the years pass but with so long of no live shows and no tours, I think a lot of people who don't give two shits about the band will want to hear Livin on a Prayer and Bad Name and sing the songs of their youth. I think you'll get some disappointed people after, but the demand will be there to go to a show.

Tough to say how long and big the tour will be, even pre-pandemic they were doing, what, 30 shows a year?

Next year...

Does anyone know why Jon doesn't get any bigger songwriters on board anymore, like Max Martin or Desmond Child? Looking at every album since 2005 you only see Billy Falcon or John Shanks as co-writers. I wonder what would be if Jon wrote music with other songwriters again. Could there be the potential to create another hit like It's My Life? I mean, the last real successful hit was Have A Nice Day, which was 16 years ago. Since then the band released songs no one really cared about except the fanbase. This House Is Not For Sale was played a few times in the radio but that's it. It's time for another big hit again, wouldn't you agree? I’d even appreciate it if Jon grabbed some rappers or other artists like Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams etc. to work with on a new single. That would be a pleasant surprise.

When was the last real success of Max Martin and Desmond Child?

We already had that duet with Jennifer Nettles en Do What You Can, no thanks. Doing a duet is not a guarantee of success ... it was a success Till We Ain't Strangers Anymore ft. LeAnn Rimes? I do not think so. I never liked duets, so I prefer that not happen.

Why are people so obsessed with massive success? that's why we keep getting more of the same.

I'd rather Jon be the only writer, and if he has to have a writing partner, Billy Falcon is the only guy with real talent. They may never get a massive hit, but their songs will age gracefully, and feel timeless.


It's just my opinion.

I think Bon Jovi is well past the point of (realistically) being able to score another big hit. The audience they'd need to target barely know who they are anymore. At that stage of a career, that's ok. Neither the likes of Springsteen, Scorpions, Metallica etc. are having big hits at that point either.
By now, it'd be all about keeping your legacy. Or in Bon Jovi's case - well, the opposite.

That ship sailed a long time ago.
Tommy has retired. Now it's only about holding onto what they got.
Sorry couldn't help it...you walked right into that one.
:lol!:

Desmond's last song with them was 2013 with Army of One. Prior to that you have The Circle with 4 songs, none of them released as singles, 2 never performed live, 1 performed once and 1 performed semi-frequently. The idea that Desmond's involvement = a hit is a long dead wish, his involvement in pop culture hits isn't near what it was.

Max Martin...the problem is he's always brought on to give them a modern sound which is very poppy but with simple guitars which brings apart the question: Do we want them to have a big hit sounding like someone else or by writing something that means something to them?

They could bring on the hottest songwriter in the world, it won't matter. They're firmly routed in dad-rock uncool territory and the only way to be cool is to change the game and I don't see them doing it so we're stuck with singles that are designed for the public to latch on to but they're not biting and the fans aren't biting so I just have.....4 or 5 album cuts each cycle to cling on to all said and done.

Just my take on it.

Desmond Child recently had a hit with Kings & Queens by Ava Max (although with the melody basically being Bad Name it’s debatable if that even counts) and Max Martin co-wrote Blinding Lights by The Weeknd, but of course they both aren’t dominating the radio anymore like they used to.

I’d be up for another Bon Jovi/Desmond collaboration, simply because it’s been a while and I’d be curious to hear what they would come up with nowadays, but I don’t think bringing in a hit songwriter could catapult Bon Jovi back on the charts. “Pop” music (in the sense of popular music) has changed so drastically over the past decade that even a song like It’s My Life probably wouldn’t have the same success nowadays as it did back then, and with the exception of a viral hit here and there or a pop artist going rock there really doesn’t seem to be much of an interest in any kind of rock music in the mainstream world these days.

I think the only way Bon Jovi could still score a mainstream hit nowadays would be if they collaborated with someone like Taylor Swift, BTS, Ed Sheeran or any of the other big pop stars who have very dedicated fanbases that will mass buy and mass stream every single song their favorite artist is featured on.

It’s all about streaming these days and Bon Jovi (just like most other older bands) doesn’t have the type of fanbase that could turn them into a streaming monster. Even though many of us probably use Spotify, most of us probably wouldn’t collectively decide to let the same song play on loop 24/7 on three separate devices just to push the streaming numbers higher.


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I'm pretty sure we've had this discussion before. Bon Jovi going after the pop market and basically dropping the rock crowd way hard kinda cost them when it comes to that - Metallica still sells a lot of records, and scene-wide, their releases and tours are treated as events. (They also do a way better job at treating the fans stuff like deluxe editions, and they release a record every 8 years or so instead of every 2 like BJ used to since their comeback with Crush. Hell, the first 4 years saw yearly releases!) Springsteen has the Rolling Stone boomer crowd in the palm of his hand, and still is revered as a live act. Scorpions I'd say sell way less, but that's the way it has always been with these two bands.

I think the bigger difference between BJ and Springsteen and Metallica is that the die hard audience for Bon Jovi is not all about the music, and the core left at this point are upper class housewives who won't cause many ripples in music circles. Springsteen and especially Metallica are still talked about and still influence current bands, too. After one too many sound updates, the only bands with an overt BJ stamp are the ones emulating the big hair days and a scene Jon wants to distance himself from.

For the record, Desmond's more recent stuff veers too far into musical like bombst for me. Again, this isn't all that new - I think that trend started with the Rasmus album he did, which was like 15 years ago.

That notice about that Max Martin isn't dominating in radio anymore is very funny. Max Martin is a biggest hitmaker of last 25 years. Every third or fourth song pleayed in mainstream radio is produced or co-wrote by him. It's not just It's my Life by BJ or Weekend's Blinding lights. He's a f*cking alien.

I was talking about recent hits, not his older hits that still get played on the radio a lot. If you look at the songwriting credits of the songs dominating the charts nowadays you’ll only occasionally find a song that was written or produced by him. And that makes perfect sense since he primarily writes catchy pop anthems and the charts are mostly dominated by rap music these days.


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Don't get me wrong, Desmond still gets hits but looking at this discography of song co-writes, you have that hit in 2020 but what was before that that made a dent? I know wikipedia isn't the best guide but he has no releases between 2015 and 2020 even. I guess I just never got the rhetoric that they need Desmond to get a hit.

Yeah I don't know about any other recent co-writes by him that made a dent either. It's hard to say if he would've had any more recent hits if he had released anything between 2015 and 2020, but I don't think they need Desmond to get a hit either. They've had hits without him and they've had songs they wrote with him that ended up as forgotten album tracks.

Desmond has had a huge impact on the music world in his heyday, but I think nowadays mainstream music is much less about the songs and much more about the artists singing them and the way they are presented to the world. Of course this is subjective, but I think there are a lot of pretty bad songs achieving major mainstream success these days, most likely simply because of who's singing them or because they've received significant media attention for their music video or the way they're marketed.

Artists like Bon Jovi that are still primarily about the music (as opposed to flashy music videos, fancy marketing campaigns or a controversial or unusual public image) don't really appeal to that market anymore, and I think that particularly applies to the US market, which of course is the market they keep trying to appeal to the most. And Jon's idea of a commercially appealing song that he keeps trying to chase is stuck in the 2000s anyways. I don't think Limitless would've been a hit 10-15 years ago, but the TYPE of song that it is probably would've appealed to the mainstream audience much more back then than it does nowadays.

Going viral and getting views on Tik Tok and Youtube determines a hit (specially in the US market). That's just something that I don't see Jon wanting to appeal to. He seems to more content just making the music he wants and touring 30 shows a year not chasing hits. I wish the songs he wanted to make were a bit rockier and involved a bit more artistic risk but he's more about the socially conscious and adapted lyrics than being musically adventurous....

That's just it, I'm not positive he's not. I'd love to know why Story of Love, a very personal song that means something to him was replaced as lead single by Limitless, an absolute paint-by-numbers song that feels so phoned in and overproduced to to the rest of the album.

Sometimes I think he'd be happier doing leftfield solo material that's more singer-songwritty. He always seems more comfortable doing covers.

I see that as a choice based on tempo more than anything. We had already had Unbroken released early by that point because of the documentary. As far why Limitless and not Beautiful Drug?? Well, many things and people factor in to picking a single, so I wouldn't even dare to guess why they made that choice....

AFAIK, the lead single was originally supposed to be Beautiful Drug. According to JBJ, his wife convinced him to go with Limitless. Who knows if that's really all it takes to change the lead single though...

Interesting. From what I remember from that interview with Jon the first single was Story of Love and how it performed would be the deciding factor on how much they toured to support the album. Which is shockingly open for him to admit to.

Which is total bullsh!t. A tour is planned 1/2 years in advance. You cannot wait to see how a lead single is performing, a couple of months before the album is released...

Sure but we're past the days where they're doing 100-150 shows a year? Aren't they averaging like 30 shows a year at this point?

Or it's possible they were waiting to tour given the state of Jon's voice, the market and public interest. Remember when they toured before WAN came out? I feel like that totally backfired.

Dno, I don't think it's that crazy given how infrequently they tour and declining crowd sizes from oversaturation. I wish I could remember the timeline of the interview. I know when Limitless got released the interview got edited and any mention of Story of Love being first single got wiped.

Aloha !

That backfired because the main sets were awful. Just have a look at the set played at Washington:

1. You Give Love a Bad Name
   
2. Lost Highway
3. Whole Lot of Leavin'
4. Because We Can
5. That's What the Water Made Me
   
6. Wild Is the Wind
7. It's My Life
   
8. What About Now
9. When We Were Beautiful
10. We Got It Goin' On
11. Keep the Faith
    
12. Amen (Acoustic)
13. The Fighter (Acoustic)
14. Someday I'll Be Saturday Night (Acoustic)
15. Army of One
16. We Weren't Born to Follow
17. What's Left of Me
18. Wanted Dead or Alive
19. Who Says You Can't Go Home
    
20. Captain Crash & the Beauty Queen From Mars
21. Bad Medicine

That's 4 songs in 2 hours catered towards casual fans. The songs highlighted in green are songs which cause a lul in concerts no matter when they're played. I'm all for playing songs that weren't hits but the songs in green were neither rare or fan favourites apart from Wild Is The Wind. It's really no wonder the first 15 shows had lacklustre reviews and it had little to do with the album being new.

If you'd swap Lost Highway, Whole Lot Of Leavin', When We Were Beautiful, Someday I'll Be Saturday Night, We Weren't Born To Follow and Captain Crash for the more exciting cuts like I'd Die For You, Blood On Blood, Raise Your Hands and the likes I'm sure reviews would've been different and crowds would've been more forgiving towards the new material. It's just a shame that whenever Jon realizes his selection of songs doesn't work he'd always resolve to playing the same other songs.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

I remember when The Circle started in February 2010, Roulette, Shot Through the Heart, Tokyo Road, Get Ready, Only Lonely, Homebound Train (RS), Something for the Pain (acoustic), Squeeze Box (acoustic) ... these two became a little repetitive but they were novelties in the start and the Bad Medicine Jukebox changed a lot (Bad Case of Lovin You, Hot Legs, Roadhouse Blues, Born To Be Wild, Pretty Woman, Old Time Rock & Roll ...).

They also rotated the new songs frequently. It was one of those tours that even though the autopilot existed from time to time, there was a bit of interest in not always offering the same thing.

The last good old days.

Good times! 2010-11 truly were the end of the band I love. It’s nice they are still around and they still release some good songs, but the Bon Jovi I adore more than any other band ended in Lisbon 2011.

I just wish The Circle had more energetic performances. To this day, I quite like the songs they wrote for that record. Especially if we're counting the stuff we know they also had but didn't use around that time! The last proper BJ album, for sure.

Matt just tweeted:

"One of the best perks to being a member of @TheJBJExp is first access to tour tickets."

So I guess a tour announcement is just around the corner.

Unless it's just another attempt at getting people to subscribe with promises they won't even be able to deliver on any time soon :rolleyes:

well, the question is ... will they release something to support the tour? like a new song or something? or will they just announ dates and that's it?

I would like them to release a new album in 2022, if that happens, maybe they will release a single for the tour?

If Jon performed every new song like he did Love's the Only Rule I feel like they'd go over a lot better.

It's mad because some songs I think didn't really get a chance.

Brokenpromiseland actually wasn't THAT bad live considering it was played once (I think) yet it got dropped pretty much.

I loved Happy Now live (never seen it in person unfortunately)

As Matt said, if Jon played every song with the same passion as he did for LTOR then we'd have heard more.



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Thorn In My Side was fantastic live, especially with the guitar solos at the end. Superman Tonight was also really good live too, I thought. And whether you like it or not (and I do), Jon and the band performed Work for the Working Man live with passion and intensity.

Agreed on both counts. I don't really care for WFTWM and the choreography was cringe but they at least believed in it enough to do something different.

There's also this, which shows just how good the song writing for The Circle actually was:

I loved everything about The Circle. I loved most of the songs and I loved the way they were played on the tour.

I recall that at the time people either loved that album or hated it. Many of us older fans really loved it.

I must be the only one on the board that hates The Circle.
For me its their worst album.

Circle for me has a fair amount of crap, but some awesome songs too. Typical post These Days Jovi really. Just wish it had the production we saw on 2020, which was great.