Bon Jovi’s fifteenth studio effort has good intentions but falls considerably short of the mark.
Rating: 32/100
I’m listening to this so you don’t have to. That sounds pretty negative right off the bat, but when did you last listen to a Bon Jovi album? Maybe you’ve heard Slippery When Wet all the way through once if you’re a big hair metal fan, or you’ve been working your way through 1001 Album You Must Hear Before You Die, but most likely, you only know the big hits. You also probably didn’t know that they released an album in 2016, too, but there’s a pretty good reason why James Acaster hasn’t tried to convince you that 2016 is the greatest year for music of all-time based on the existence of This House is Not for Sale – it’s not very good.
So, on with 2020. The good news is that the band aren’t trying to relive their ‘80s heyday with over-the-top production and guitar and vocal histrionics. The bad news is what they’ve done instead. Limitless sounds dated, but only sounds dated back to 2008 or so and pretty much sets the bland tone for the rest of the LP, with a bunch of lyrical cliches and a backing track that could sound like any heartland rock band. Long-standing guitarist Richie Sambora left in 2011, and his presence is sorely missed, and while replacement Phil X is no slouch, there’s a distinct lack of ‘wow factor’.
You know what’s even cooler than heartland rock though? Country rock! Yay! Do What You Can sort of sounds like a modern Bryan Adams song, and not in a good way, because that’s sort of not possible these days (sorry Bryan). The song is meant to be an uplifting ditty about keeping safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there’s a distinct lack of subtlety needed to approach such an obvious song subject. Without nuance, it genuinely sounds like it could be one of those U.S. college Christian rock songs with a music video featuring a big smiling family who have probably never thought to turn off FOX news. Anyway, a positive message from Bon Jovi but completely unnecessary.
American Reckoning is more overtly political than ‘Do What You Can’. It describes the murder of George Floyd at the hands a racist policeman, and shows us that Jon Bon Jovi likely supports the Black Lives Matter movement, but this kind of protest song doesn’t have the nuance or depth to really do anything. There’s no rallying cry about what needs to be done, only a bland description of what has already been done. And the cynic in me would say that the chorus of “Stay alive” suggests that not being killed by police is a matter of inherent force of will, not deconstructing a broken system. If you want an example of a powerful protest song from 2020, look no further than ‘I Can’t Breathe’ by H.E.R. Moving swiftly on…
Ah, random lyric-less vocals! My favourite! Anyone with half a brain could take one look at the song title in Beautiful Drug and predict that the chorus would have “Love is a beautiful drug” in it. So yeah, this song sucks. And you know how some artists get a really good and just repeat it until the end of forever? Well, it turns out Bon Jovi can do that with bad ideas, too! Case in point: Story of Love.
Lower the Flag is probably the best of the protest songs on 2020, dealing with unchecked gun violence in the U.S. Still, it’s not great. Much of the trouble is that Jon Bon Jovi is providing us with something we really don’t need to hear from him. That’s not to say that protest songs should only be written by people who have a clear connection to the injustices that take place, but I suspect that a large charitable donation to a program in need of it will do more good than this album ever will, especially since Bon Jovi has precisely zero clout in 2020. Somehow, it managed to reach No. 5 in the U.K. Albums Chart, although Amanda Holden is at No. 4 at time of writing, so who even knows what’s going on anymore.
Bon Jovi called this album 2020 because of the subjects it attempts to deal with, but it’s an apt name, because much like the year, I doubt anybody will end up loving this album. I listened to 2020 so you didn’t have to, but now I wish somebody else had listened to it for me.
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