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.