While Bon Jovi’s 2024 album, Forever, made news headlines for falling out of the Billboard 200 a week after its Top 5 debut, the music itself wasn’t nearly as dire. Arriving 40 years after their debut, the album seemed like a timely evaluation by a group that had weathered several recent changes, mostly with grace and cautious optimism.
Still, the band returned to the studio to revisit Forever‘s 12 songs with guests ranging from Bruce Springsteen and Jason Isbell to Avril Lavigne and Jelly Roll. Forever (Legendary Edition) doesn’t so much alter the album’s overall perspective, but it does provide some new shades to the songs.
Forever was released amid vocal cord issues for singer Jon Bon Jovi; he has said that Forever (Legendary Edition) was conceived because he wanted to give more light to a record he wasn’t able to promote on tour. Its nature makes it more of a supplement than a new album. There’s one new song, the LP opener “Red, White, and Jersey,” with the rest of the album repeating the tracks in the same order as the 2024 version.
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The foundations of Forever‘s songs haven’t changed much. Whether it’s the War and Treaty adding gospel soul to “The People’s House” or Def Leppard‘s Joe Elliott providing arena-rock muscle to “Walls of Jericho,” the guests supply lively, if mostly unnecessary, verse and chorus vocal assistance to Bon Jovi’s familiar hook-filled ’80s and ’90s flashbacks.
The best moments on Forever (Legendary Edition) are the solo and the highest-profile ones. “Red, White, and Jersey” features the band without collaborators, presenting a direct line without any outside distractions; meanwhile, Springsteen’s throaty assist (and Nebraska-like harmonica) on “Hollow Man” punctuates the real connection between the artists. They’re not always ideal fits: Country singer Lainey Wilson seems out of place, and the Spanish version of “We Made It Look Easy” with Carin Leon is a huge misstep. This revision achieves that sort of balance throughout, giving Forever a new life while diminishing some of the gains that Bon Jovi made the first time.
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Gallery Credit: Anthony Kuzminski