Why Does Bon Jovi Never Play 'Thank You For Loving Me' Anymore

This is interesting point. After Crush (and including it), Jovi did very easily abandon their singles. And it's not like in the past where you had like 6 or 7 singles per album, it was just 3 usually. It portrays the band in negative light, cause so what if the single was not a massive hit? But through repetition and persistence it becomes a staple Jovi concert hit. Like Captain Crash did in fact become just that. But why not Misunderstood, Everyday (especially as lead single), Make a Memory (lead single)...

This way it seems like every single and album are just thrown to the wall to see if it sticks. But it doesn't have any chance of sticking since at least WAN, not only due to band's aging but complete lack of promotion. So if there's no hope of breaking through to general non-Jovi public, at least show faith in your songs that you put out to represent your work

"But through repetition and persistence it becomes a staple Jovi concert hit" But we complain here daily that too many spots are given to non singles. Lost Highway and Whole Lot....arent' being played because they're hits but because Jon wnats them to be staples and they're easier to sing.

It's pretty much the same set of songs every tour, four or five new songs and then two or three songs rotated in each tour. Such a waste.

Yeah that's true. My point is like, okay Jon pick your representation of album that you worked for months and/or years, but then stick to them. Like there's no point of not playing Everyday or Misunderstood for several tours, as they were indeed moderate hits in some markets. And then consequence is that you completely need to ignore Bounce album on Greatest Hits cause nothing makes sense after abandoning the singles. As for non-singles (LH wasn't a single right?), I mean after HAND hit potentials are very low and I would just pick best representatives as singles and then play them regularly (not meaning every night). But then again, how much is it Jon's decision and how much record company I don't know

There's also set list flow and the fact that not every studio song works well live to consider.

Totally agreed.

After a certain point its tough to know what qualifies as a single past knowing a video was made for it but whether or not it was serviced to radio is a different question.

You can only do so much. Misunderstood while a big hit at the time in Canada, will people remember it 20 years later to the point where you cut a hit for it? I don't know. I genuinely which LH and Whole Lot weren't played as often. We got it...finally started getting played less but it at least played a purpose as far as crowd interaction but there's a bunch of 80's songs that could take that place.

I agree, but there's no point in abandoning relatively successful singles, especially from today's perspective. I mean, yeah, in Jon's eyes, Everyday was a failure as it wasn't even near success of IML. But with today's knowledge, it is one of 3 largest hits Jovi had post-IML period, and not playing it and disregarding it just means it doesn't live on. Because if you play it, millions of your audience hears it, remembers it, and song then lives on. Similar how Sleep when I'm dead and similar junk songs live on. It doesn't even matter that I regard Everyday as a complete dud of a single and a song, if you picked it as your lead single, that even charted very high in several countries, then stand behind it as a band. Does it need to be played every concert? Of course not, but not once per tour also.


"Everyday" peaked at No. 1 in Canada and Spain and reached the top 10 in several other countries, including the United Kingdom (No. 5), Australia (No. 5), Switzerland (No. 6), Sweden (No. 6), Italy (No. 7), and Germany (No. 7).[3][4][5] In the United States, the song reached No. 36 on the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart and No. 31 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

Yeah, I mean I'm not advocating that newer stuff needs to be played heavily replacing vintage 80's and 90's songs. From my perspective, you could drop most of post-2000 output in live setting (and with Jon actually singing them ala 2010-11 form). But, from Jon's perspective, I understand and even advocate his relevancy criteria by forcing newer stuff to his audience. But when you do it (and it is forcing basically), you should then force that stuff you forced to the radio behind your record company strength. Hardly anybody plays This House or Legendary on radio because they want, but because record company paid and/or demanded. But to abandon them immediately is a negative signal.

Like, take Make a Memory, alright it wasn't a global hit that Desmond thought it would be, but it is a solid song and more importantly, lead single from a successful album. Stay behind it for a few tours and this staying behind it becomes a main argument that you are a relevant band still, because hundreds of thousands of people know it, likes it, considers it a staple. If you don't, you just play to the notion of nostalgia. If so, just play 80's stuff and don't bother. I guess what I'm saying is it would be most rational to stay behind these singles, instead of acting kind of insulted that they're not global hits.

And I completely agree about Misunderstood example, but now it's too late evidently. However, if you played it every tour since Bounce, it would give it endogenous life regardless of the charts. These songs that general public heard few or several times at least on radio, would connect and resonate more in live setting versus okay here's deep album cut Jon really likes so I can go to bathroom or for beer cause its a new song nobody heard before (except diehards that bought the album)

Interesting! I'm not sure why you're using Make a Memory as an example though. It was played 71 times in 2013 and brought back in 2018 for 8 shows (there were 39 shows that year) so that's not....terrible. For the most part the first quarter of the following tour has the singles (Everyday went pretty far into the HAND tour, etc). Memory I thnk got played a little less because it's a balllad and they only do so many of them per night, but I don't think it's been ignored.

I also don't think the average person is seeing the band tour after tour and getting used to non singles as fan favourites. There's probably a percentage but at that point if you're seeing the band every year, you know about those songs already.

Those numbers are good but Everyday being one of the three largets hits post IML, dno if I agree. HAND, Who Says and maybe Memory? I feel like those did better considering radio play. Did Born to Follow do better than Everyday or was it just shoved down our throats longer?

I think it depends on the country. In England Everyday absolutely got more play than all of those songs. Probably in most of Europe too. The only one that really came close was HAND, then Who Says quite a way behind. Memory and Born To Follow got next to no airplay here.