Bon Jovi released The Circle in the United States on November 10, 2009. Their 11th studio album returned to rock after the country influence of Lost Highway, with “We Weren’t Born to Follow” as its lead single. The project had begun with a much smaller assignment: write a few new songs for a greatest-hits collection.
Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora started that work in September 2008. As they explained to the Associated Press, the financial crisis changed what they wanted to write about. Unemployment and foreclosures gave the sessions a different focus, and the new material kept accumulating. By the time they went back to the record company, they had enough for another studio album. The retrospective could wait; they wanted to release the songs they were writing about the world around them. Sambora had seen his father laid off from factory work while growing up, giving the subject a personal connection.
That change of plan affected the recording schedule, too. Producer John Shanks had already been cleared to take on other work while the band prepared the compilation. In a December 2009 interview carried by the Khaleej Times, Jon explained that they recorded small groups of songs whenever Shanks was available. Sessions might cover two, three or four tracks at a time. Shanks had worked on Have a Nice Day and Lost Highway, and returned with Jon and Sambora as co-producers.
The writing itself stayed deliberately simple. Sambora told MusicRadar that he and Jon worked with two acoustic guitars, capturing ideas on a cassette recorder or an iPhone. They wanted the songs to hold together before developing the arrangements with the band. He estimated that their sessions had produced about 28 songs.
Even the lead single changed before the album arrived. Sambora said his original solo on “We Weren’t Born to Follow” emphasized melody. After the early version reached radio, listeners contacted the band asking for a more aggressive guitar break. With Jon’s agreement, he recorded a replacement for the album. “Ask and you shall receive,” he told MusicRadar. The revised solo was a specific response to what fans wanted to hear from him.
The album’s concern with livelihoods had an equally specific starting point. Discussing “Work for the Working Man” on NPR’s Fresh Air in December 2009, Jon traced the song to a 60 Minutes report about DHL’s withdrawal from Wilmington, Ohio. He was struck by the damage to surrounding businesses as well as the employees losing their jobs. One worker’s task was to escort colleagues out and collect their identification badges. Those badges represented a place in the community as well as employment, and that loss stayed with him.
“The pay scale has changed, that’s for sure,” Jon said, acknowledging the distance between his own life and the people in the song. He’d secured a record deal young and hadn’t experienced their working conditions. He approached their situation as a narrator, drawing on the working-class background he and his bandmates shared while recognizing that their lives had taken a different course.
The Circle entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 with 163,000 copies sold in its first week, becoming Bon Jovi’s fourth album to top the chart.
