The Singles Jukebox

In which we say “Bon jour!” to Bon Jovi… and immediately say “au revoir” after…

[Video][Website]
[3.20]

Alfred Soto: I can always count on John Bongiovi to write the most mediocre song in the world: whether the chords suggested the wrecking balls and higher grounds scattered through the song or he had other ideas in mind, there’s never a doubt exactly in which neighborhood he’s gonna build this house. At least his Comcast commercial has a hook.
[2]

Hannah Jocelyn: What you’re picturing from reading the title? That’s exactly what this sounds like — another part of the platitudinous monolith that is “We Weren’t Born To Have A Nice Life,” which is only slightly better than “Because You Can’t Go Home On This Lost Highway.” Unlike those other songs, there’s nothing even faux-empowering here; “Standing on the dirt where they’ll dig my grave,” like that dog-eat-dog line in “Café Society,” is just kind of sad, as if a confirmation that there really is no reason for them to continue making music. Not that the band is pretending otherwise, but they march on anyway in a form that resembles those slapdash animated movies studios dump out every so often — even fulfilling their purpose as purported time killers for parents and toddlers/mild filler on Sirius XM The Pulse, each one remains a pointless, formulaic retread for anyone outside its target audience.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: Producer/songwriter John Shanks has been a totem of middle-of-the-radio mediocrity in pop music for well over a decade now, working with Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, Miley Cyrus, and loads others. But there’s no one he’s worked with more than Bon Jovi, helping them sound more and more like the Goo Goo Dolls with each album since 2005. Say what you want about their hair metal ’80s glory days, but at least Bon Jovi sounded distinctive then; now they sound like nearly anyone else on your local “the best hits of the ’80s, ’90s, 2000s… and today!” radio station. That’s never been more evident than here, as “This Is House Is Not For Sale” doesn’t sound like anyone. Jon Bon Jovi’s voice gives this the slightest bit of individuation, but apart from that, this could be any generic rock band — and effectively, is. 
[2]

Katie Gill: Look, the house has got to be a metaphor for SOMETHING, I just don’t know what. Some people speculate it’s about the band but all the religious imagery in the video gave me a brief worry that Bon Jovi might take a brief foray into Christian rock and Jesus/the church is the house. And yes, I know I’m focusing on the house metaphor because the rest of the song is just dull, uninspired, middle-of-the-album filler, but you take what you can get, and the prospect of Christian rock Bon Jovi is too weird an image not to consider.
[2]

Gin Hart: #GeneralAmericaVibes #WorkingManMetaphors #BruceSpringsteenReferences #BandsWhoWriteSongsAboutTheirBand
[5]

Brad Shoup: Aw, it’s about their fantastically lucrative career, and not something more… topical, I guess, what with the tarred sky and flaming roads outside the barricades. You can always build on a flimsier structure than power pop.
[5]

Iain Mew: “I’m coming home, woah woah”? Someone has been listening to their Nikon-core! Though their version of it comes as deep-fried as the kind of unsatisfying tempura where you can barely make out the taste of what it is that has been fried and aren’t sure on whether that’s a good thing.
[3]

Josh Langhoff: Jon Bon Jovi has more terrible lyrics than my tasteless neighbor has hostas, but you could forgive old-school Jovi because the lyrics fit the narrators. Gina and Tommy told one another it didn’t really matter if they made it or not, then a couple lines later they swore they’d make it anyway, because that’s how desperate they were. But ever since the Jovis’ New Jersey destroyed their pretenses to desperation, they’ve been stuck trying to rewrite Frankie’s (arggggh) self-satisfied “My Way” in a style that screams “Livin’ On a Prayer,” a cognitive dissonance that they’re unable or unwilling to metaphor away. So maybe this lyric still fits Bon Giovanni’s unrepentant narrator, who prizes integrity above all and imagines he has it; maybe I just can’t stand his lunkhead notion of integrity. To his dying day he’ll steadfastly refuse to explain why wishing wells are bad, why he makes his bandmates moan like poltergeists, or why he pronounces “theeese house” like a Romanian count.
[2]

Cassy Gress: Isn’t this what Bon Jovi would say to someone who bought their old house(s), after the more jovial tone of “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” didn’t work? “Uh, I say you can’t go home, ’cause I own this property now.” “THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE!”
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: “Tramps like us,” sang the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, at a time when Bruce Springsteen was somewhat out of fashion, “and we like tramps.” The concept, essentially, was to imagine Springsteen songs as if they were made by a literate Minneapolis bar band that grew up on hardcore punk songs. Bon Jovi had a slightly different concept, but they hit upon it two decades earlier: what if they did Springsteen, with his down-on-their-luck working class heroes and rock ‘n’ roll mythology and heapings of JERSEY!!! pride, and transformed it into a big bright cartoon of Reagan-era Americana? Thirty years later, “This House is Not for Sale,” which has a Hold Steady riff, is what you’d get if you took latter-day Springsteen and had a bar band come up with its own version of the sound — JBJ even works a “wrecking ball” into the lyrics. “We Take Care of Our Own,” except it’s about waiting for the real estate market to bounce back.
[5]