Bon Jovi used its seventh Madison Square Garden show on Tuesday to restore the songs it had left out of Sunday’s shortened set. Jon Bon Jovi was in strong voice, and the 23-song performance ran two hours and 25 minutes, longer and fuller than the night before.
Tuesday at Madison Square Garden
The band brought back Wanted Dead or Alive, Always, and Red, White and Jersey after skipping them on Sunday. It also dusted off Raise Your Hands for the first time since 2019 and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead for the first time since 2022, swapping them in for Lay Your Hands on Me and This House Is Not for Sale.
That put Tuesday’s show at 23 songs and two hours and 25 minutes, compared with Sunday’s 20 songs and two hours and five minutes. For a residency that began on July 7, the extra material gave the room a more complete read on where the band stands now, especially with Jon Bon Jovi’s voice under close attention after his 2022 vocal cord surgery.
Seven of nine shows
Tuesday was the seventh show in the nine-show stay at Madison Square Garden, which is Bon Jovi’s first public, large-scale concert run since 2022. The timing mattered because the band had already drawn concern on Sunday when the shorter set omitted Wanted Dead or Alive, a song that remains the group’s third-most-played song ever behind Livin' on a Prayer and You Give Love a Bad Name.
What made Tuesday different was not just the length. It was the reset: the songs returned, the pacing stretched back out, and the frontman delivered enough strength to make the earlier cut look like the exception rather than the plan.
Europe in August and September
Bon Jovi leaves Madison Square Garden for Europe after the residency, with stadium shows scheduled throughout August and September. That makes the Tuesday set a useful checkpoint: if the band can keep the voice steady at 23 songs, the broader run has a cleaner runway than Sunday suggested.
