Blueshadow’s Bon Jovi Blog

I just caught Bon Jovi’s performance at the Grammys. It was good, but it raised a lot of questions for me. I’m not sure why they left Jennifer Nettles onstage after Who Says was over; it’s not like she really has any relationship with Livin’ on a Prayer. Also, they could have totally cut Who Says out. I suspect that it was included because it was Bon Jovi’s only prior Grammy win. But it could have been cut out and then they could have done all of ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’ — you know, the song that they were actually nominated for this year.

That being said, I was totally envious of Jennifer Nettles at the end of Who Says. The lucky woman totally got to be in the middle of a Bon Jovi sandwich there. How many of us female fans would do just about anything to be in that position?

Also, Jon totally needs more highlights. Still. And he needs to comb his hair before he goes out onstage. His hair was just horrible. (I think he’s been hanging around too many politicians lately; it’s starting to look like politician hair.) Of course, that could partially be because I need to get a new cable box that supports HD. I was watching the Grammys in standard def and my TV defaults to stretch mode, which makes everybody look fat (and didn’t do Jon’s hair any favors).

In terms of fashion, I’m not sure what was up with the guys. I was reminded of the loading screen from Guitar Hero that says “You are not the first band to wear all black on stage”. It’s especially not a good choice when most of the stage is black as well. It left Jon and Richie blending right into the background. A little splash of color would have really made things pop a bit more. In this case, I would have argued in favor of using black and white footage on the video screens behind the band and having them wear color. The black was especially offputting when the camera zoomed out at the beginning of Prayer and the screens showed the white-on-black heart and dagger. The band almost vanished.

CBS has a poll set up for fans to vote on what song they would like to see Bon Jovi perform. The choices are quite standard, though it does seem odd that they don’t include any songs from The Circle. I would have expected that ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’ would at least be one of the choices, since that’s the song that they’re nominated for.

I did see some speculation that the band might perform two songs. Personally, I don’t think that’s likely. If they were up for one of the big awards, I’d say that it was a possibility. But they’re nominated for “Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals”, which usually doesn’t seem to be one of the ones that gets discussed at work the morning after the Grammys.

Seeing as how I’m not much into pop music these days at all, I’ve never even heard the other nominated songs in this category. So, I have no way of making any kind of educated guess as to whether Jon and the boys stand even a remote chance of winning this award. (I suppose this illustrates how far Bon Jovi has strayed from their hard rock roots.) Lately the music industry has shown more willingness to hand out awards to Bon Jovi, so maybe there’s a chance. I suppose I need to wait and watch the awards to find out.

The bad part about this is that if Jon wins his first “real” Grammy for “We Weren’t Born to Follow”, we’re just going to get more songs just like it and the rest of The Circle.