WS - Deconstruction 9 - Always - Bon Jovi

Artist - Bon Jovi

Song Title - Always

Year - 1994

Genre - Rock

Director -

"Always" is the best selling single by American Rock Band 'Bon Jovi', selling one and a half million copies in the U.S, and over three million worldwide. The song, at it's peak reached #4 on the U.S Billboard charts and #2 on the Top40 mainstream. It also reached #2 in Britain and Australia, as well as #4 in Germany.

Due to the success of the song, it was unlikely that an Indie company or a small company would be the record label for the song. The song comes under the label of Mercury Records. Mercury Records is a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. This shows that the video for the song would have had access to good, big name actors and high budgets, if required.

The song comes under the Rock Genre. Typical instruments for the Rock genre include Vocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, synthesizer, keyboards. Included in the band and video are the instruments electric guitar, drums, keyboard, bass guitar and the Vocals of the lead sing Jon Bon Jovi.

The Narrative aspects seen in the visuals do appear to follow the lyrics of the song. The song is about a love for someone, seen in the video to be the female the male character is seen with at '0.32'. An interesting point to make about the lyrics is actually in the first line - "This romeo is bleeding". The reason this is an interesting line is that the song was originally written for the film "Romeo is bleeding", but the band withdrew the song because they didn't like the film.

Throughout the video, there are a lot of close-up shots of Jon Bon Jovi. This could be to appeal to the femal gaze theory and the female audience, but it could also be because he is a big star and recognisable figure for the band. Intercut throughout the video are shots of Bon Jovi singing into the microphone. He gives quite an emotive performance when on screen; he isn't simply stood still singing. There are also shots of other members of the band playing their instruments.

As previously said, the song was actually originally written for the film "Romeo Is Bleeding" and the first line of the song reflects that. The band dd not like the song however and the song was actually disregarded after Jon Bon Jovi put it on a shelf and forgot about it, until a friend found the song and convinced Bon Jovi to release it.

The video is generally a narrative based music video. However, intercut at certain points thoughout the video are shots of the band playing and, more frequently, Jon Bon Jovi singing. Therefore the song has some aspects of performance to it. The majority of the video however, is narrative based. 

Below is the Official Music Video for "Always".