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When did you first notice Jon's voice had started to decline?

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  #11  
Old 03-07-2018, 02:20 PM
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I had become a fan with the Crush tour DVD in 2004 and it was the only concert video (plus the few bonus clips on TLFR) I knew from them until then.
HAND was the first album as a fan and I saw the Amsterdam promo concert on VIVA2 back then and was shocked at how bad HAND and a few others sounded. So yeah, probably around that time and that was only in comparison to 2000. When I saw Wembley for the first time, I couldn't believe how much better they had been back then.
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  #12  
Old 03-07-2018, 07:09 PM
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I became a fan in 2008 and a year later became a die-hard who watches dozens of live performances on YouTube daily. So the general notion of Jon's decline was very obvious as the very first live performance I saw from them was Livin' On A Prayer from The Crush Tour DVD. I was shocked to see Jon not singing the chorus and that they were shamelessly using the playback for those parts (what kind of a rock band does that, seriously???).

However as my knowledge kept increasing in 2009, the initial dissapointment about Jon's decline was quickly replaced by optimism from his improvement in 2008. You can see how he was back singing songs he couldn't do in 2003-2006. Then, the MSG '08 DVD was released, which wasn't perfect from a vocal standpoint, but was still very satisfactory with Jon doing a very decent job on Always, Dry County, Blood On Blood, Living In Sin, etc.
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Old 03-08-2018, 05:22 PM
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Originally Posted by Captain_jovi View Post
Bounce tour, the Amphitheater run.
Yup - I agree with this. I was shocked at some of the notes he couldn't hit. It seemed to deteriorate from there until close to the end of 2008 when they went to Europe and then sang in Central Park.

The 2010 and 2011 tours were, in my opinion, the last really great shows. They weren't all great all the time but most were damn good.

Even in 2013 at Giants (MetLife) and then later at Mohegan Sun he sounded decent but not great.

What I'm hearing right now from the latest Runaway tour is that he cannot really control his voice at all. I have tickets for 3 shows and they may be very iffy
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  #14  
Old 03-08-2018, 07:49 PM
DavetheGodofKeys DavetheGodofKeys is offline
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Originally Posted by Kathleen View Post
Yup - I agree with this. I was shocked at some of the notes he couldn't hit. It seemed to deteriorate from there until close to the end of 2008 when they went to Europe and then sang in Central Park.

The 2010 and 2011 tours were, in my opinion, the last really great shows. They weren't all great all the time but most were damn good.

Even in 2013 at Giants (MetLife) and then later at Mohegan Sun he sounded decent but not great.

What I'm hearing right now from the latest Runaway tour is that he cannot really control his voice at all. I have tickets for 3 shows and they may be very iffy
The MetLife 2013 gig is very doctored. It's So clear in songs like Prayer, KTF, Always and These Days. One of the worst gigs from 2013.
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Old 03-08-2018, 08:02 PM
jesyjames jesyjames is offline
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The Crush album for me was an eye opener. It was such a shock coming off These Days which contained some incredible vocals. Destination Anywhere hinted at what was to come on Crush, but the album itself was more low key so it wasn't as noticeable. I remember listening to Thank You For Loving Me and just thinking: "he sounds weird." And, of course, "Save the World," is so nasally I find it nearly unlistenable.

I also remember listening the Storyteller's gig on VH-1 and thinking: "man, he can't sing anymore." Like many of you, I look back now and would give anything to have that voice back, but at the time I thought it was absolutely terrible.

The only album where I think Jon actually sounds good post Destination Anywhere is Lost Highway. Sure, he doesn't have the soaring vocals or incredible high notes, but he's fairly easy to listen to and delivers the songs well.
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  #16  
Old 03-08-2018, 08:57 PM
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Originally Posted by jesyjames View Post
The Crush album for me was an eye opener. It was such a shock coming off These Days which contained some incredible vocals. Destination Anywhere hinted at what was to come on Crush, but the album itself was more low key so it wasn't as noticeable. I remember listening to Thank You For Loving Me and just thinking: "he sounds weird." And, of course, "Save the World," is so nasally I find it nearly unlistenable.

I also remember listening the Storyteller's gig on VH-1 and thinking: "man, he can't sing anymore." Like many of you, I look back now and would give anything to have that voice back, but at the time I thought it was absolutely terrible.

The only album where I think Jon actually sounds good post Destination Anywhere is Lost Highway. Sure, he doesn't have the soaring vocals or incredible high notes, but he's fairly easy to listen to and delivers the songs well.
I never took Destination Anywhere as an indication of decline or as a hint to the future at all. I certainly noticed the change in style, since I had expected more of the style of vocals found on Blaze, but the vocals came across as having subtle elegance and intended stylistic choice. As I have gotten older, there are times when the vocals on Blaze feel over the top and DA's are perfectly restrained to suit the mood. Destination Anywhere's vocals just sound mature, in the best sense.

Crush's vocals sound calculatedly safe and vastly watered down over any previous Bon Jovi album, which raised flags that were confirmed by the performances following in its wake.

As for Storytellers.. ugh. Talk about anti-climatic. I had forgotten how bad that performance was. In another universe, they did a normal Storytellers like any other band. When that would have been, I do not know. The series started in 1996, so Crush was the first time the band was active for a performance. Perhaps doing it during Lost Highway / The Circle would have been far better.

I suppose we could consider "An Evening With.." as their Unplugged/Storytellers. Speaking of, they really should have had a standard "Bon Jovi Unplugged," with an accompanying live album, capturing the band in top form. Nothing against "An Evening With..." but it is an outlier.
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Old 03-09-2018, 12:20 AM
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The first time I heard the country version of Bang A Drum, I knew Jon sounded different... And that's the vocal tone we still have today...

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  #18  
Old 03-09-2018, 03:08 AM
BJFan99 BJFan99 is online now
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Originally Posted by Rdkopper View Post
The first time I heard the country version of Bang A Drum, I knew Jon sounded different... And that's the vocal tone we still have today...

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Are you talking about the nasality becoming prominent? In my opinion, the first (albeit very subtle) signs of Jon "singing through his nose" appeared on the These Days album. For example, the lower parts of Hearts Breaking Even sound a bit nasal already.

In my opinion, his voice was pretty much the same throughout 1995-2011. It became more nasal after '06 (while on the other hand his range grew drastically during the second half of the LH tour), but you could still tell it was the same guy singing here...

https://youtu.be/WGJwBPgqxWA

...and here:

https://youtu.be/ZjiHpv0MVlk

Jon did sound different in 2010 than he did in 1995, but the difference wasn't HUGE.

PS. I think his dropout on the BWC tour was largely due to technique-based vocal exhaustion, which (in a very similar way to the Slippery run back in '87) basically killed all of what was left of his voice at that time. The inconsistency he's displaying nowadays was certainly apparent back then already - as this video proves:

https://youtu.be/OtQeL3c3dsM

Jon goes for Always like it was the last song he'd ever perform on stage, nailing most of it, and then can't sing These Days to save his life. Singing all those high-pitched songs with an unhealthy technique does take its toll by time. (Of course the stress must have been a factor as well, but I don't think that after all these years to recover, he would still sound as bad as he does now if his cords weren't f***ed up.)

Last edited by BJFan99; 03-09-2018 at 03:30 AM..
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  #19  
Old 10-09-2022, 08:15 PM
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I first thought I sensed a slight decline with the These Days album. The vocal didn't seem quite as good and powerful as it had been on KTF. But then I saw them for the first time in 1996 (Milton Keynes and was blown away by how powerful and perfect his voice sounded) and decided there hadn't been a decline just that he was using a different technique slightly on record. I saw them again in 2000 and 2001 and thought maybe his voice wasn't quite as good as in 96 but still great.

Looking back now I think I was probably right to sense a slight decline with These Days and I put that down to smoking from 94 onwards having quite a quick effect. The smoking thing is really sad if it is that and also makes me angry! I read an interview somewhere in which Jon talks about quitting smoking (I think it was around 2010), but the reason he gives for stopping is not to protect his voice or his overall health, or even to be a better role model (all of which would have been great reasons), but rather because his insurance premiums were too expensive because of being smoker!!! This I thought was pretty sad that he was essentially saying that he wasn't bothered about his health, voice etc but the size of his bank balance! Its comments like this that make kind of support the view that Jon's more interested in running Jovi as a business and making money than about the actual music.
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  #20  
Old 10-09-2022, 09:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Lak View Post
I first thought I sensed a slight decline with the These Days album. The vocal didn't seem quite as good and powerful as it had been on KTF. But then I saw them for the first time in 1996 (Milton Keynes and was blown away by how powerful and perfect his voice sounded) and decided there hadn't been a decline just that he was using a different technique slightly on record. I saw them again in 2000 and 2001 and thought maybe his voice wasn't quite as good as in 96 but still great.

Looking back now I think I was probably right to sense a slight decline with These Days and I put that down to smoking from 94 onwards having quite a quick effect. The smoking thing is really sad if it is that and also makes me angry! I read an interview somewhere in which Jon talks about quitting smoking (I think it was around 2010), but the reason he gives for stopping is not to protect his voice or his overall health, or even to be a better role model (all of which would have been great reasons), but rather because his insurance premiums were too expensive because of being smoker!!! This I thought was pretty sad that he was essentially saying that he wasn't bothered about his health, voice etc but the size of his bank balance! Its comments like this that make kind of support the view that Jon's more interested in running Jovi as a business and making money than about the actual music.
I remember that interview. He sounded like an idiot.
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