Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 by Gene

The Bon Jovi Auto-Lyrics Generator
In the morning, my wife often leaves the television on one of the country music video stations so that, I will move faster, in order to flee the house more efficiently. The other day I was listening to the current video, being sung by the cute chick from Sugarland. Four lines in, I said "I guess she used her Bon Jovi lyric generator to write this"... and then Bon Jovi leaned into the camera shot and started singing the chorus with her. Which means I can now identify Bon Jovi lyrics blindfolded, even when he's not singing the song. This is not good.

The song is called "Who says you can't go home" and you've heard it by now, because it's one of those viral Top 40 songs that even cloistered monks start humming last week without knowing why. It's off of Bon Jovi's latest album Have A Nice Day.

Please note, even the album's title is a cliche.

I have this dream that someday Bon Jovi, just for the hell of it, writes an original lyric instead of using the auto-generator or refrigerator magnets or whatever he's got going on right now. Because currently whenever I hear a song of his I actually fly into a murderous rage, and that's just not healthy for me or the people around me. Please review the lyrics of this song if you don't understand what I mean.

Hint: "dog without a bone", "been there, done that", "born a rolling stone", "just a hometown boy", "spending too much time on the telephone", "every step I take", "the only life I've ever known", and, of course, "who says you can't go home" are all cliches or legitimate song lyrics from other songs. (And I missed a few, I'm sure.) What's left is a lot of pithy crap involving borrowed metaphors (rainbow & pot of gold, seeds sown) and pedantic junk that probably came from the "cliche-reversal" button on his auto-generator program (i.e. "you can take the home from the boy, but not the boy from his home", which not only makes almost no sense, the sense it does make is the opposite from the theme of this entire song.)

Now, don't get me wrong: I know a lot of musicians put cliches in their songs. But in most cases there's at least a fragrance of inspiration in them somewhere, a line or two that is consciously clever. Bon Jovi's reliance is absolutely pathological. He must be stopped.