In the Hulu documentary “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story” premiering on Hulu April 26, the ups and downs of this famed rock band are portrayed in all their grit and glory. Telling the story honestly was a primary goal of lead singer Jon Bon Jovi. “One thing we agreed upon.. was that this was not going to be a VH1 puff piece,” he said during a Television Critics Association panel in Pasadena, California. “This has to tell the truth and have all the warts to go with it in order to tell a real truth. So I’m proud of the film.”
And one of those truths? Until recently, it wasn’t clear if Jon Bon Jovi was going to be able to sing. At all.
Although Bon Jovi underwent vocal chord surgery in 2022 due to one of his vocal chords showing signs of atrophy, recovering his singing voice has by no means happened overnight — and the recovery is still ongoing. His struggle can be seen in several scenes of the documentary.
Even the title of the film, “Thank You, and Good Night” is meant to hint at a possible farewell from live performance. “The ambiguity of the title is also, what does the future hold for me and for my band? And that’s a health-related question,” Bon Jovi admitted. “Although I’m making great strides, we faced something that I didn’t expect, which is, this vocal cord surgery. And though I’m doing very well and sang for my first time in public just the other night (so I’m feeling good), when we shot this there was no definitive answer.”
And while he’s feeling better, Bon Jovi still has not hit his bar for concert-level performing. “If can’t go out and do two-and-a-half hours a night, four nights a week, it’s ‘Thank you, goodnight.'” he said.
On the bright side, Bon Jovi says he’d like to tour again next year if his recovery allows it, and he has motivation. The band’s 16th studio album, “Forever,” is scheduled for release June 7.
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10 Songs We Never Want to Hear on the Radio Again
There is perhaps no greater tragedy than that of a perfectly good song that gets overplayed. Classic songs like the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” and the Who’s “Who Are You” may have been great when no one had heard them before, but billions of satellite radio spins later, they’re hard to sit through.
In a way, the overplaying is our own fault. Radio stations will only play songs the public demands, and if those songs reach a point of oversaturation, it behooves us as listeners to look inward and ask if we didn’t contribute to this mess. However, some songs are so played out we don’t care whose fault it is. We just want it to go away.
Here are 10 examples of songs we would jump out of a speeding car to escape from.
Weatherman90 / Wiki Commons
If “Hey Jude” was just the “song” that stopped at the 3:09 mark, we probably would have fewer problems with it. Sadly, that obvious point at which they could have ended the song – literally on a high note – is immediately followed by a single chord progression and singalong non-lyrics that go on for four minutes, making the ending longer than the actual song. By the time they’re two minutes into the ending, you may wish for a two-minute coma to overtake you so you don’t have to hear the rest.
YouTube/the Beatles
Guns N’ Roses achieved superstardom and chart success thanks to this ballad from their “Appetite for Destruction” album. It is impossible to overstate how often innocent ears were subjected to it daily during its heyday, and there was nowhere you could go to get away from it. It blasted from passing cars, and even people who didn’t like heavy metal or hard rock would play it if they got a few drinks in them. Luckily for this piece of music, much worse songs came along in the ensuing years, so it now seems brilliant in comparison.
Fair use /Wikipedia
We know we bring up this song a lot, but we would be shirking our journalistic duties if we did not include Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” on our list of overplayed songs. The song was already overplayed when it came out over 40 years ago, and to people of a certain age, seeing it resurface with a vengeance in the 2000s was akin to witnessing a long-dead, hated relative claw its way out of a grave to terrorize townsfolk and feast upon their warm flesh.
Amazon
Maybe we’re old-fashioned, but we’ve always believed that if a song becomes a big radio hit played ad infinitum, it would be nice if the singer could sing. Sadly, when “Wonderwall” came out and became a massive hit, it was sung by Liam Gallagher, the reason we’re glad they invented autotune. His off-key nasal voice makes you sick of the song a lot faster than you usually would if it were sung by someone tolerable.
YouTube/Oasis
If you want to pick overplayed songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, there is no shortage of choices, and we could make an entire 20-item list of overplayed songs just by them alone. For this list, we’re going with “Proud Mary,” a massive seller that charted internationally. These factors may have led radio programmers to believe that 54 years later, we still yearn to hear it several times daily. We don’t. Do yourself a favor and check out the vastly superior version recorded by the late Tina Turner instead.
Fantasy Records / Wikimedia Commons
Just like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fleetwood Mac has to its credit a seemingly bottomless supply of overplayed songs, making it a challenge to isolate just one for this list. We’re going with “Don’t Stop,” an inexcusably trite song full of “Me Decade” toxic positivity that suggests that tomorrow will miraculously be better than today, solely by virtue of it happening in the future. We will take the song’s advice and await a tomorrow in which we never have to hear this song again.
Weatherman90 / Wiki Commons
When the grunge genre hit, it was supposed to replace the outdated idealism of generations past and embrace a more world-weary view. In reality, it just became the next source of overplayed songs, none of which got more overplayed than this. Critics at the time said that the song expressed the feelings of the era’s teenagers, but when you look at the lyric sheet, it’s just a bunch of nonsensical rhyming words strung together haphazardly. Also, shouldn’t the band be #canceled for using a very un-PC description of a person of mixed race?
Amazon
It pains us to include Rihanna on this list because she’s a gifted singer who’s produced a lot of really enjoyable music. She even wows Super Bowl audiences while pregnant! Having said that, how many times do you need to hear the last two syllables of the word “umbrella” before you need the men in white coats to come after you with butterfly nets? That’s a rhetorical question, of course, but the song was ruinously overplayed, and over 15 years later, we’re still in recovery.
Amazon
If the mere mention of this song’s title fills you with mortal terror, congratulations. That means you’ve been alive at some point since 1989 and have personally been on hand to see this throwaway novelty song turn into an instrument of torture. The B-52s had been turning out unique and entertaining music for most of the 1980s, so it’s a shame that their worst song (yes, it’s their worst song) became what they’re best known for. Luckily, they never overplayed “Rock Lobster,” so we can still hang on to that and remember what once was.
Amazon
If you are unable or unwilling to bear children, you might have escaped the 2010s without hearing Idina Menzel’s “Let It Go” on the regular. For the rest of us who had kids around the time the movie “Frozen” came out, this song was a permanent fixture in our daily lives, like humidity or termites. Children, it seems, like to hear the same song over and over again, and you’d better believe we heard this one all the time. At the same time, no one forced us to take our kids to see “Frozen” in the first place, so maybe this one is on us.
YouTube/ DisneyMusicVEVO
Featured Image Credit: Hulu.
