Bon Jovi – Forever (2024) Review

“What do you sing when the song’s been sung?” asks Jon Bon Jovi.

A few years earlier, that might have sounded like another piece of late-career reflection.

By the time Forever arrived, it meant something very different.

After a run of live shows in 2022 exposed just how serious Jon’s vocal problems had become, he underwent major reconstructive surgery and entered a lengthy rehabilitation process with no guarantee that the voice which had carried Bon Jovi through four decades of arena tours would ever return. The uncertainty surrounding that recovery looms over this record, but not in the way you might expect.

Because Forever isn’t a gloomy farewell album.

Instead, it’s the sound of Jon Bon Jovi feeling very grateful to still be here at all.

The band themselves described the recording process as a “return to joy”, and that change in mood is obvious from the very first track. Where its predecessor 2020 was weighed down by social commentary and a sense of obligation, Forever feels warmer, looser and considerably more interested in enjoying itself.

And surprisingly often, that’s enough.

This Family Tree’s Got Nothing Left To Prove

By this stage of their career, Bon Jovi are no longer reinventing themselves so much as refining a formula they know inside out.

They understand precisely what their audience wants, and when everything clicks, the results can still be remarkably effective.

Case in point: Living Proof.

The storming rocker takes the strongest elements of the band’s post-2000 sound — talkbox guitar, an enormous chorus and slick modern production — and moulds them into one of the album’s most immediate moments.

There’s real urgency in the lyrics. The guitars (yes, guitars!) push forward. Tico Torres is having the time of his life.

Sure, you can trace its DNA backwards through the likes of Everyday, It’s My Life and ultimately Livin’ On A Prayer, but that isn’t necessarily a criticism. Familiarity has always been part of Bon Jovi’s mass appeal, and when combined with their renewed sense of purpose, it produces a track that’ll be remembered as perhaps their strongest straight-ahead rock song in over a decade.

Looking Back Without Standing Still

Reflection is a frequent feature of Jon Bon Jovi’s songwriting.

What changes on Forever is how openly the band acknowledge their own musical past.

Catchy lead single Legendary possesses a noticeable country-tinged optimism that brings memories of their mid-2000s detour into Nashville, recalling both Lost Highway and Who Says You Can’t Go Home, even if it never quite reaches the same heights.

The talkbox featured on Living Proof immediately conjures up images of It’s My Life.

The opening of Waves recalls the widescreen drama of 1990’s Blaze Of Glory. Sleeper hit The People’s House borrows some of the rhythmic drive of Keep The Faith, while Walls Of Jericho and the Ed Sheeran co-write Living In Paradise revisit more recent Bon Jovi territory.

Crucially, Forever doesn’t feel trapped by any of it.

In fact, it’s credit to Bon Jovi that these songs are strong enough in their own right to acknowledge the band’s storied past without sounding desperate to go back.

The weakest version of latter-day Bon Jovi has always been the one trying too hard to prove it can adjust its sound to match whatever’s currently in the charts, but the version you’ll hear on Forever is that of a band who are just having lots of fun.

A New Surge In Creativity

There are several genuinely strong tracks scattered throughout the album’s 48-minute runtime.

We Made It Look Easy is exactly the sort of reflective rocker longtime fans will welcome, as Jon looks back on the friendships, chaos and years that carried them here.

It never catches fire in the way it might have with one of Richie Sambora’s trademark guitar solos, but it also never collapses into syrupy nostalgia like some of their more recent work, and the vocal delivery features a notable tinge of sadness that suggests this really might be the last ride.

Then there’s Legendary.

Yes, it is absolutely formulaic.

And yes, you can practically telegraph the moment where the band will drop out so that Jon can deliver the hook directly into the camera.

But these New Jersey rockers have mastered their craft so well that it still works.

That’s the annoying genius of Bon Jovi: you know what they’re doing, they know that you know what they’re doing, and then the chorus arrives and it rattles around your brain for three months regardless.

The veteran frontman has spent decades playing the best friend you wish you had during the moments you wish you didn’t, and Legendary finds him slipping effortlessly back into that role — providing us with another wholesome reminder that even the baddest of bad days can apparently be rescued by a wink and a Hollywood smile from the eternally photogenic Jaan Baan Jowvee.

It should be unbearable.

Instead, it’s charming.

Still Making Waves

Aside from the radio-ready fireworks of Living Proof, the real gem is Waves.

The verses are restrained, the lyrics are unusually strong, and the chorus arrives with the kind of emotional scale Bon Jovi have always handled well when they resist the urge to overproduce.

The fragility in Jon’s weathered voice actually helps the track, making for one of Forever’s standout pieces of work. Unlike the band’s tendency to pre-announce power ballads with gooey piano keys and layers of synth, Waves’ understated entrance slowly swells into a truly satisfying crescendo that will have you coming back to it time and time again.

"I'm sinking as you drift away from me."

Waves

Postcards From The Past

My First Guitar works for similar reasons.

The backstory is almost suspiciously perfect.

Jon tracked down the guitar he had sold as a teenager and bought it back decades later, finding it essentially as he remembered it.

On previous albums this could have resulted in unbearable levels of nostalgia, but here the story carries genuine warmth — and, just as importantly, it actually gives Phil X an opportunity to sound like Phil X. The riff has some bite, the arrangement has movement, and for once the guitar is allowed to feel like more than background decoration.

This should happen more often.

Because at its core Forever is a strong collection of songs made by a very capable rock band, and one of the major criticisms levelled at modern-day Bon Jovi is that sometimes you need to work a lot harder than you should in order to hear them.

Lost On The Same Old Highway

That brings us to the album’s biggest problem.

John Shanks remains both an important part of modern Bon Jovi and one of the main reasons modern Bon Jovi sometimes struggle to sound exciting.

The production is immaculate.

Too immaculate.

Everything is clean, controlled and balanced.

Unfortunately, rock music occasionally benefits from something sounding like it might fall over.

Forever features more guitar-driven moments than the post-Sambora albums which preceded it, but there are still many occasions where everything feels unnecessarily compact and restrained.

Tico Torres, once an instantly recognisable ingredient in their stellar 80s and 90s output, continues to sound like he’s trying to escape from the dance-rock vortex that inexplicably swallowed him whole more than a decade ago.

And while it is genuinely satisfying to hear Jon singing about how much he loves the first guitar he ever owned, there are plenty of moments where you wish he would simply turn the fucker up.

The album would benefit enormously from a little grime.

"I had a dream last night, and in that dream I lost my sight."

The People's House

When It Doesn’t Work

Not everything lands.

Kiss The Bride is the weakest moment.

The idea is heartfelt enough, but the execution feels calculated in a way the album’s better sentimental material does not. It comes across less like a spontaneous emotional moment and more like somebody at Bon Jovi, Inc. identified an opening in the wedding-song market.

Elsewhere, Living In Paradise is pleasant but slight. Walls Of Jericho has bags of energy without ever really going anywhere. And the anthemic The People’s House truly grooves, but never quite reaches the heights it threatens to.

This is what ultimately separates Forever from the New Jerseyans’ truly great records; on Have A Nice Day or Keep The Faith, even the deeper cuts often felt important. Here, the good songs are genuinely good, but there’s an obvious step down.

Anything But Hollow

If this does prove to be a farewell, then album closer Hollow Man is the perfect way to do it.

Housed within a sombre acoustic arrangement, it places Jon Bon Jovi’s voice and lyrics firmly at the centre, as he delivers some of his most disarmingly honest writing in years, while reflecting on a future that may no longer involve the only thing he has ever known.

There’s a quiet sadness running through this performance, his weathered voice carrying the weight of an artist coming to terms with circumstances that were beyond his control.

It’s not a dramatic goodbye, but a moment of acceptance — and in that sense, potentially the perfect bookend to a remarkable career.

"You can't make it rain staring at the sun."

Hollow Man

Bon Jovi: Forever

Bon Jovi’s sixteenth studio album feels like a late-career triumph.

Against the odds, these seasoned New Jersey rockers have rediscovered much of the soul and sincerity that first made them such a likeable band, and for the first time since Richie Sambora’s departure, the conversation is focused firmly on the music, not what’s missing.

Forever is rich in meaningful lyrics, affectionate nods to the group’s past, and flashes of soaring guitar work (see; Living Proof, Waves, and Fight Somebody) to remind listeners why Bon Jovi’s brand of blue-collar rock became so beloved in the first place — even if there are still moments where we wish they’d lean further into it.

Their future remains uncertain, but one thing is clear:

Jon Bon Jovi may not know where he’s going, but he knows exactly where he’s been.