Bon Jovi is opening up on his new album about the Black Lives Matter movement and isn’t concerned with being canceled for it.
On Bon Jovi’s 15th studio album, “2020,” the 58-year-old rock and roller takes aim at white privilege in a record titled “American Reckoning” that was originally donned “I Can’t Breathe,” inspired by the death of George Floyd, who was murdered in May when a white police officer held his knee against his neck.
“Then George Floyd’s death happens. And because the world had stopped and we were all home and couldn’t do anything else work-related, I personally found myself slowing down, reading the paper, watching the news, and taking care of myself mentally, physically, spiritually. I couldn’t help but write a song and see if those emotions could come out on paper. And so I wrote “American Reckoning.”
He went on to add, “When the world stopped, and we were all watching television and hopefully reading the papers and forming our opinions of what was going on during that period in time, you saw this passing of an African-American differently. Is it because the world had stopped? Is it because it was such good pictures with audio? For whatever reason, it resonated, and it certainly resonated with me. When his buddy gets on the air and says to the morning-show host, “In his last breaths, he was calling out for his mom,” I welled up. The only way that I can capture those feelings was to talk about it with my wife and to sit down and write a song about it.”
Despite rock & roll’s limited Black inclusivity, Bon Jovi has no regrets releasing a track standing in solidarity with the movement.
“I was absolutely proud to put it out there, even to run the risk of criticism or cancel culture or anything else,” he says. “The great gift of being an artist is the ability to be a witness to history.”
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