Friday, April 23, 2010

One of the reasons that Bon Jovi drives me nuts

Bon Jovi has this annoying habit (and it's not limited to them, sure, but their examples seem particularly egregious) of just recycling their old songs. I realize that plagiarism, while still technically occurring here, is usually ignored when you're plagiarizing yourself, but geez...

This first example is the subtler of the two, and it relates to the chorus - they have incredibly similar intro lines where the title is shouted over three beats, and the fade-out back into the chorus is structurally similar, too, and again repeats the song title. The chorus on the whole is rather similar, (I lack the vocabulary to describe it - I have absolutely no training in music) though I suspect that has to do with both being so utterly conventional rather than one being derived from the other. (And I'm sure I could find two if I actually listened to their music. I picked up on these only because Bon Jovi is ubiquitous.) Bizarrely, they're on the same album, too - wouldn't it be better to just cut one of them, rather than repeat yourself?

"It's My Life"


"One Wild Night"


This pair is far worse, I think. "We Weren't Born to Follow", which was released just last year, sounds - on the whole, but especially during the chorus - like a slightly slower version of "Born to be Your Man", which predates it by more than 20 years. Seriously, just listen to the chorus of each (about 50 seconds into WWBtF, and 90 seconds into BtbMB) - they are the exact same song, with virtually the same melody and structure. The newer one is just a bit slower, and so sounds a bit deeper - and I suspect that if you slowed the older song down, they would match almost perfectly.

"We Weren't Born to Follow"


"Born to be My Baby"


Sure, John's voice has a pretty limited range, but are they really so creatively defunct that they need to shamelessly recycle songs?

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