#28 - Welcome to Wherever You Are

Artist: Bon Jovi
Album: Have A Nice Day
Other Versions: None
Era: current "power pop rock"

Lyrics

I know I just did a HAND song a couple entries ago, and I usually try to mix up albums and eras more than that, but I need to write about this today for reasons I'll go into in a minute. Early entry today, partially to make up for it being so late last night and partially for the same reason I have to do this today.

Bear with me, this is going to seem random and pointless at first but there's a point, I swear.

I'm currently in college at a university that isn't particularly good for a major I don't really want to have a career in (Johnson & Wales, Computer Graphics, respectively). There's a lot of reasons for that, the main one being I made a lot of mistakes my first twoish years of high school and didn't recover enough to get in where I really wanted to go. I had to settle for where would take me, and that's good ol' JWU, which doesn't have the major I really want (film - being an actor/writer/director is my dream). I tell it to people in a way that pretty much denies I ever made the mistakes I did - I say "well, film's so competitive I wanted a more sensible degree to fall back on". Practical, but a complete lie.

So I'm in my second trimester of uni, heading full-steam down a road I don't want to go down. Needless to say, I'm not particularly happy with the whole situation, but I deal with it and play it off.

The first time I heard "Welcome" I broke down crying. It was less than a month into my first tri, four thirty in the morning (I'd stayed up to download a bootlegged Japanese version of the cd because I just couldn't wait for the actual disc to hit stores). Sitting there with my headphones on, trying to be quiet so as not to wake my roommates, I just sobbed. It was "I know sometimes it's hard for you to see/you're caught between just who you are/and who you wanna be" that did it to me, because, well, yes. That's it exactly.

Listening to it subsequent times, when I was less emotional, when school seemed less pointless and less like it was damning me to a life I don't necessarily want, the song didn't have nearly as much impact. It's a nice song, and I'm thrilled that the intensity has returned to the Bon Jovi ballad, but it's hard to see past the cliches when you're not feeling them.

This tri has put me squarely back in my rut. My classes are tedious, my life is fairly boring, and I spend a lot of time contemplating the hows and whys of my current situation. I won't lie, I've been pretty depressed for a couple weeks. Things aren't that great.

And as I walked out of my dorm to go get on the bus to go to my least favorite class, "Welcome" came on. Today it is gorgeous and sunny, cold but not in the harsh "you will never be warm again" way, it's refreshing today. And all that and the song just hit me again the way it did the first time. I kept my composure this time, but honestly all I wanted to do was fling out my arms and sing along and just cry it out. It was an absolutely sublime experience, and I wanted to do this song today so I could write about it before I lost the feeling.

This is a song I get, and it gets me. Yes, it's full of cliches, as a power ballad it's a cliche in itself. But cliches are cliches because they're universal, because everyone knows how that feels. So it's hard to fault this for being cliche when the cliches hit so hard.

My friend, the amazing Jonsgurl over at the One Wild Night board, has said she feels this is the perfect song. I didn't get why at first - now I see where she's coming from. Sublime musical experiences are rare.

My Rating: 9.5/10

Edited 3/25/06: Added lyrics