What About Now: Bon Jovi song-by-song review, part 2 of 2

Did you miss Part 1? Read it here.

What’s Left of Me ( Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Billy Falcon): when you consider that Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora are inductees of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, you have to wonder why Richie Sambora only co-wrote five of the fifteen songs on the Deluxe Edition when the ones he partakes of are the precious gems on this disc.

Many critics having reviewed this song made much about Bon Jovi playing the persona of a Marine just home from war, a newspaper man, and a player in a defunct band as though he knows nothing of the lives of the little people in the world.

With the exception of Bruce Springsteen, nobody sings songs better for Everyman---all of the social classes that were torn asunder by America’s Great Recession---than Jon Bon Jovi and his band of compassionate souls.

Whether you were ripped off by greedy bankers or retired prematurely by a job market that doesn’t want to pay for experience or the risk of hiring a fifty-something, this song is the follow-on to “It’s My Life”, which was a celebration of living in the now and possibilities as endless as the sea.

This is a song that says sure it’s still my life, but things aren’t going as well as I thought they would.

“I got a lot to give Say can you see?

I’m still breathing and my heart still beats,

“I ain’t checkin out I still got my dreams,

Does anybody want what’s left of me?”

The musicianship is crisp and tight as Bon Jovi joins the songs characters into one collective ‘We’---after all, he is singing about us---forever reminding the listener that as Bon Jovi himself says, “It’s not how many times you fall down that matter, but how many times you get back up”.

“I got a lot to give Say can you see?

I’m still breathing and my heart still beats,

“I ain’t checkin out I still got my dreams,

Does anybody want what’s left of me?”

Army of One (Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Desmond Child): brought to you by the same song-writing team that crafted Bon Jovi’s first number-one single “You Give Love A Bad Name” as well as ‘Livin On A Prayer’ and ‘Bad Medicine’, this me-against-the-world mantra was recently enlisted as the theme song for the Discovery Network’s upcoming series, ‘North America’.

It’s yet another of Bon Jovi’s upbeat mantras that this band does so well. From the Sunday morning church organ intro by steady key-stroker David Bryan to the into the breach military drumming of Tico Torres, it is a call to arms against a life turned foe from friend just when we trusted it most.

“I’ve got a voice, it’s all on me,

A beating heart inside of me,

I’m an Army of One,

I’m a soldier”

Lyrically the weakest song on the record, Richie Sambora’s soaring guitar lines are the highlight as Mr. Bluesman dive-bombs demons real and imagined and underscores that he hasn’t played better since “Bounce”.

Thick As Thieves (Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, John Shanks): a love ballad graced with David Bryan’s subtle stylings backed with rich orchestral accompaniments, the song could also be about the band itself---or Bon Jovi and Sambora’s decades-long ‘sexless marriage’ except for the kiss midway through.

“Well it ain’t always pretty, sometimes it got rough,

Could have thrown the towel in and thrown our hands up,

Seems like we’ve always been and always will be,

Thick As Thieves”.

Beautiful World (Jon Bon Jovi & Billy Falcon): ten songs in the songwriting collaboration of Bon Jovi and Billy Falcon yields melodic and artistic perfection with this gem.

Some critics---notably People Magazine and New Jersey’s own Star-Ledger---have panned the lyrics, but this song is total perfection.

Eastern mystics tell us Life is Ying and Yang, a world of contradictory opposites forever providing moments of joy, but more often than not pain, loss, and suffering as the guarantees of the human condition.

Bon Jovi never shows us the Ugly, without painting the Upbeat; never hands us an empty glass without filling it to the brim; and never accepts futility as the way things have to be, and we are the richer for it.

“There’ glory in the saddest story” opens the door on the contradictions of life and shows us how to celebrate and embrace it all, balance and counter-balance.

“Look at it, just sticks and bricks,

Makes you wonder how the pieces fit

Where we’re going and where we’ve been

This ain’t paradise we’re living in

It’s a diamond, it’s a dirty plastic pearl

Ah but ain’t it a beautiful world”.

Every aspect of this song shines.

Room At The End of the World (Jon Bon Jovi, John Shanks) opens with a pulsating guitar that harkens back to “Superman Tonight”, but here no savior is needed because we’re shown a magical place in the universe---a musical God particle heralding another galaxy where...

“…all the roads go to end

Lost Valentines get sent

Where a rose comes back to life

Where young love never dies

Where we never say goodbye”.

The vocals are dreamy, guitar lines ethereal, keyboards gently accompanying like raindrops nudging brittle leaves.

All that’s missing are the black light posters and the hooka. Beatles influence circa 1969.

The Fighter (Jon Bon Jovi): if ever a song underscored the notion that Jon Bon Jovi considered delivering a solo record a la’ Richie Sambora’s “Aftermath of the Lowdown” this is it, but listening to the harmonies the two deliver here only reinforces the power of the pair.

Throw in orchestral backing brimming with French horns and you have a uniquely different Bon Jovi song that sounds nothing like its’ predecessors.

Curiously though, the regular U.S. edition of the CD ends with this song, leaving the far better and less melancholy “With These Two Hands” for the Deluxe Edition with two other Bonus Tracks.

Essentially two Jon Bon Jovi songs are thrown in---the other being the Grammy-nominated “Not Running Anymore”---to create a reason to spend $3 extra for the upgrade when the CD would have been better served ending “With These Two Hands” and “Into The Echo”, and including printed lyrics in the package.

Deluxe Edition Bonus Tracks (U.S.):

With These Two Hands (Jon Bon Jovi and Billy Falcon): a vibrant heart beat guitar line opens this rocker about the choices life presents us.

Jon Bon Jovi’s voice digs in, “we can make this hurt or we can make it better”, promising us that the world runs on collective karma.

If we choose to “close a door or shine a light”, succumb to the brooding power of evil that poisons society and wears down the weak; or we can accomplish anything because it’s all in our hands.

“Wipe the teardrop from your eyes, reach up until we touch the sky,

Free to dream and make it true, no there ain’t nuthin’ we can’t do”

The guitar work is determined, sounding as though Sambora, Bon Jovi and second guitarist Bobby Bandeira are the competing choices we must face, the string-work spinning off in richly layered separate lines that ultimately converge as one, because there truly ain’t nuthin we can’t do.

Into The Echo (Jon Bon Jovi and Billy Falcon): sounding suspiciously like a Jackson Browne song circa 1986, with delicate piano and synthesizer lines coaxed from David Bryan’s masterful touch, the band opens a door to the eternal echo chamber; one in which we deposit our hope and dreams and loves and losses…into the vast echo chamber that is the world.

“Are you who you are

What’s under that mask

Do you burn for the future or yearn for the past

Did somebody send you, some broke fairy tale,

Now you wait by the water for a ship that has sailed”

Sambora launches a solo like roman candles seeking life in a parallel universe---into the echo---where we most certainly expect them to come back from the deep beyond having discovered other life forms. He has never played better than he has on this record and it’s a revelation.

Not Running Anymore (Jon Bon Jovi): this solo effort written by Bon Jovi for the motion picture “Stand-Up Guys” and nominated for a Grammy only to succumb the the wiles of Adele is straight out of the Bruce Springsteen genre circa “The River” and “Nebraska”.

It’s moody and brooding and full of sweet redemption as the protagonist struggles to stop taking geographic cures and stand in one place and face what he has done to himself and those he loves.

The song is poetic, helped along by slide guitar and drum machine, and would have won the Grammy had it been sung by Adele or Bruno Mars.

Like so many Bon Jovi records before it, What About Now grows on the listener with each play.

Many of the songs here are a perfect soundtrack to a full-throttle drive down the highway in your own town with your windows wide open and your sound system turned all the way up; while still others provide the safe harbor of shelter from the world in quieter moments.

The key to truly appreciating this record is to not expect Bon Jovi glories from three decades ago, but to embrace where the band takes us today if we can only identify with the vignettes in the songs instead of comparing them to the days of “suns of beaches lying under the sun, with their radio on”.