Bon Jovi in Sydney 8/12/18

Bon Jovi ended the Australian leg of the This House Is Not For Sale Tour in Sydney. I'd spent the week in Sydney catching up with family and friends before going to the concert on Saturday night so it's been a busy few days, but I'm finally home in Perth and writing this blog post.

Here's what was played in Sydney:

Sydney, NSW, Australia - ANZ Stadium - December 8, 2018 set list

1. You Give Love a Bad Name
2. Raise Your Hands
3. Lost Highway
4. Who Says You Can't Go Home
5. This House is Not For Sale
6. Roller Coaster
7. We Weren't Born to Follow
8. We Don't Run
9. It's My Life
10. God Bless This Mess
11. Born to Be My Baby
12. Have a Nice Day
13. Keep the Faith
14. Bed of Roses
15. Lay Your Hands on Me
16. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
17. Captain Crash & the Beauty Queen From Mars
18. Livin' on a Prayer
    
    Encore #1: 
19. Bad Medicine
20. Wanted Dead or Alive
21. I'll Be There For You
    
    Encore #2: 
22. Blood on Blood
23. Someday I'll Be Saturday Night

Videos from Sydney

"Blood on Blood":

"Someday I'll Be Saturday Night" plus the final bows:

"Born to Be My Baby". Jon goes into the crowd and sings in front of the person filming:

"Livin' on a Prayer". Jon dips into the crowd for this one too:

If you have any videos from Sydney you'd like to share, feel free to link to them in the comments.

My thoughts

Jon's vocal issues have been pretty well documented by fans over the last few years. But he sounded good by current standards, even if he was kind of running out of steam in the second encore (I'm still glad he did the second encore though). There are concerts where he's been pretty much rooted to the spot and clinging to the mic stand while sounding average, and that obviously doesn't make for a good show. In Sydney, however, he was moving around, working the crowd, and being a front man worth seeing. I had the best time, and I'm really glad I made the trip.

Plus, as I briefly mentioned in my belated Brisbane post, I got to meet Phil X in Sydney... I might do a separate blog post about that?

I'm also quite proud of the fact that the lead singer of my favourite band is one of the few Americans who can pronounce "Melbourne" and "Brisbane" correctly. 😛

Birds of Tokyo were great as the support act too. They're from Perth, by the way. Hopefully Bon Jovi can make it there next time. 😉

Were you at the show?

Where to next?

Bon Jovi have announced tour dates for Europe in May, June, and July 2019. The Sydney concert also coincided with a Runaway Tours trip, so there was a Q&A with Jon Bon Jovi, David Bryan, Tico Torres, where it was reportedly revealed a new album is slated for release in 2019.