Bon Jovi’s “Always” Wasn’t Meant for You—Secret Origins Revealed! Power Ballad Was Written for Forgotten Gary Oldman Thriller ‘Romeo Is Bleeding’ Before Becoming a Global Hit.

Growing up, it felt like every blockbuster came with a hit soundtrack album, packed with songs featured in and inspired by the film. Each had a big lead single, complete with a music video cutting between the band and movie clips, and all seemed right with the world. Bon Jovi, never ones to shy away from that formula, wrote ‘Blaze of Glory’ for Young Guns II in 1990. They planned to follow it up with another ultra-sincere power ballad for a 1993 thriller. But something went wrong. The song became a massive hit. The movie? Nobody remembers it.

Ask people of a particular generation about songs like Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’, Limp Bizkit’s ‘Take a Look Around’, and Will Smith’s ‘Men in Black’, and they will immediately associate them with Armageddon, Mission: Impossible II, and, well, Men in Black, respectively. However, if you ask them what movie comes to mind when they think of feather-haired lothario Jon Bon Jovi belting out ‘Always’, they’ll probably be stumped—and for good reason.

While the ‘Always’ music video features a few recognisable faces, it wasn’t tied to any film. Instead, it stars a young Jack Noseworthy, who would later appear in Event Horizon, reflecting on his ill-advised decision to cheat on Carla Gugino, later of The Haunting of Hill House, with Keri Russell, now known for The Diplomat. What follows is a melodramatic spiral: he loses both women, destroys a painting of Gugino made by a romantic rival, and blows up the man’s apartment. It’s over the top, but somehow fits the video’s heightened sense of heartbreak and drama.

Whatever the case, while the ‘Always’ video gave fans all the epic power balladry and heartache they could hope for, it was very much not on the soundtrack for any film. The opening lines are a clue as to what movie the song was initially written for, though: “This Romeo is bleeding / But you can’t see his blood”.

That’s right – ‘Always’ was initially intended as the tie-in single for Romeo Is Bleeding, the 1993 neo-noir thriller in which Gary Oldman plays a corrupt cop who becomes entangled with a Russian assassin. Like many stylised thrillers of the era, it never quite found its audience, but it remains a cult favourite for fans of early ’90s crime cinema.

Bon Jovi wrote it with the intention of it being a solo effort, but when he caught a preview screening of a rough cut of the movie, he had second thoughts about the idea—mostly because he thought the film sucked. “The script was great,” he lamented on the 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong DVD, “the movie wasn’t.”

So, to the producers’ chagrin, Jon told them he was withdrawing ‘Always’ from the film, and it went back into the vault, so to speak. The film turned out to be a critical and commercial disaster upon release, and he was likely delighted that he’d narrowly avoided being associated with it.

It subsequently became a Bon Jovi song when A&R man John Kalodner found Jon’s demo and convinced him to re-record it with the full band. In 1994, ‘Always’ became one of their best-selling singles ever, and to this day, it is their last Billboard Hot 100 top ten hit. Not bad for a song that almost suffered the ignominy of soundtracking a movie dubbed a “senseless, tasteless and demented postmodern noir”.