Being part of State Farm Insurance’s commercial for Super Bowl LX “is playing into the new me,” according to Jon Bon Jovi.
The New Jersey rocker, who’s returning to the stage this summer after being sidelined since 2022 due to vocal cord issues, made a cameo appearance in the comic spot (which debuted in full on Sunday, Feb. 8) alongside actors Danny McBride, Keegan-Michael Key, Hailee Steinfeld and the Grammy Award-nominated group Katseye. In the ad, McBride and Key have started a fly-by-night company called Halfway There Insurance, using Bon Jovi’s iconic Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Livin’ On a Prayer” with revised lyrics (“We barely cover a boat by the dock/our bike coverage leaves out a lot).
In the ad (both 60-second and two-minute versions) a keytar-wielding McBride and Key, with a triple-neck guitar, perform the song in various costumes, while Steinfeld is a customer poking holes in the shortcomings of their coverage. The spots end on a highway, where Katseye is dancing and a leather-jacketed Bon Jovi, with Jake From State Farm (Kevin Miles) riding shotgun, rolls up in 1971 Ford Torino convertible and asks Steinfeld, “Need a lift?” before driving off. Miles says, “Stop livin’ on a prayer. Get State Farm.”
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“I do believe that the (State Farm) commercials are a part of American pop culture right now,” Bon Jovi told Billboard from the California set during early December. “They’re fun, they’re funny, they’re whimsical. And when they came to me with it, I saw the script and I found joy in it. I just smiled — as simple as that. I couldn’t say no to that. To be part of something that is fun and lighthearted…to go and have fun and have joy in my heart and not get too bogged down in all the details and seriousness of it now, that’s what I want. A song like this transcends anything we’ve ever discussed, ever, in my career. You should have some fun with it. So I said, ‘Why not?’”
Further kismet for Bon Jovi is having the New England Patriots playing as the AFC representative in the Super Bowl. A former Arena Football League owner, he’s a longtime close friend of Patriots owner Robert Kraft and a Patriots partisan — which put him at odds on the set with Steinfeld, who’s married to rival Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
“I kept my distance,” Bon Jovi quipped. “I’d just hold up my Patriots logo every once in a while and remind them who’s in first place.” So about that “new” Bon Jovi….
His vocal struggles and treatment for it were chronicled in depth during the 2024 Hulu/Disney+ docuseries Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story. “The recovery was much longer than anticipated,” says Bon Jovi, who hasn’t toured since 2022 and was unable to go out in support of the band’s 2024 album Forever. During that time he underwent vocal cord medicalization, a reconstructive surgery and intensive therapy. He did play a camera-free show for select fans last June in Nashville, but it’s only this year that he’s making a full-scale return to the stage, with nine sold-out shows starting July 7 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, followed by stadium dates during late August and early September in Edinburgh, Scotland, Croke Park in Ireland and three dates at Wembley Stadium in London.
“Am fully healed, finally, and so I’m going back to it and…gonna start slow,” Bon Jovi says. “To be honest, there was many a time I thought (the recovery) was good enough and the inner circle would say, ‘No, it’s not good enough.’ And there’s be times when I’d get down and want to throw the towel in, and they’d say, ‘No, you’ve made too much progress.’ And I just stayed diligent ’til it got to a point where I’m 102% confident that it’s really not an issue anymore, thank God.”
Bon Jovi has been working with a singing coach, while the band has been getting together once a month to rehearse. He’s “well down the road” of planning the shows, including two different setlists, and promises that “I’m not trying to chase 1995 or pretend I’m 35. But the quality of the sound of the (voice) is a very good version of 2026, so I’m very happy with that. All the range is there. In [the State Farm ad], the actors are having to pretend to sing the high notes, and I just laugh and go, ‘You all think you can sing that song. Go ahead, try it!’ But I could show them how to do it.
“It’s freeing to wake up every day and — I haven’t done this for over a decade — wake up and make a sound and know that it’s not taxing, physically. I pride myself on being a trained vocalist and not a stylist. I know the instrument. I work at this every day. I wouldn’t go out…unless it’s great.”
Despite that, Bon Jovi said there will “absolutely not” be any additional concerts during 2026.
“Everybody’s already ‘please, please, please,’ and the answer is ‘nope,’” he said. “It’s quite a statistic…Three Wembley shows, 80,000 a night, nine Gardens sold out in a day. It’s like, holy Christmas, the demand is there. But I’m not rushing this. I am going to take my time, gonna enjoy it. Then in ’27, based in joy and gratitude and humility, we’ll go out. I really believe this is kind of a rebirth, just getting back to my youth, with all the wisdom that I carry. (To) go in there without the weight of the world on my shoulders anymore. That’s all I wanted out of this, the simple joy of performing again.”
The shows, he adds, will include “all the obvious hits, in all the right keys we’ve always performed them. I can honestly say there’s nothing in the catalog of the 18 albums that I couldn’t sing, even if I did it once or twice. It’s locked again.”
The dates will provide some delayed promotion for Forever, which debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. He followed it last year with the Forever (Legendary Edition), which featured duets on the album’s songs with good friend Bruce Springsteen, Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson, Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, the War & Treaty and others. Another album is not in the offing yet, however. “I’m not in a place to write a whole new record yet,” Bon Jovi said. “I still have too much love for the Forever album.”
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