Jon Bon Jovi Admits He Wasn't Initially 'Impressed' With One of Band's Biggest Hits

Sometimes even an artist doesn't realize when they've created a work of genius, which is why even Jon Bon Jovi was first quick to dismiss what would go on to be Bon Jovi's greatest hits.

In the new Hulu docuseries, Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, one episode delves into the making of the band's 1986 hit, "Livin' on a Prayer," which was written by the 62-year-old frontman, guitarist Richie Sambora, and legendary songwriter Desmond Child. Apparently Bon Jovi was so unmoved with the song that his co-songwriters got down on their knees and begged him to record it.

"It wasn't that I didn't want to record it, but I wasn't all that impressed on the day that we wrote it," the rocker confirmed to People in an interview published over the weekend. Initially, he recalled that the song was just "the simple chord progression, the melodies and the lyrics."

"But the bass line came to life in the demo studio, when we took it back to the band and worked it up. That's how it became what it is," Bon Jovi continued. "We knew what we wanted, we just didn't have it, and so I was like, 'Yeah, it's good. Good day. Good day at the office.' And I was wrong. It's one of the biggest songs in our catalog."

At the time, he thought "Livin' on a Prayer" would be a more appropriate song for a for a movie soundtrack. Of course, it ended up being the second single from the band's third album, Slippery When Wet, and earning them their second consecutive No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit.

Though, that wasn't the only time Bon Jovi's intuition failed him. He also wasn't too keen on the single "Always" from the band's 1994 album Cross Road, which he now admits is "also one of our biggest songs ever."

"When I'd written that, we demoed it for a movie, that I had written it for, and thought, 'Yeah, that's not very good,'" he explained. "Put it on the shelf, and an A&R guy, who was a friend of ours, was listening to some of those lost songs, and he said, 'You know, this is a monster hit.' He was right."

In addition to the songwriting controversy, Bon Jovi also generated a flurry headlines leading up to the release of the docuseries with his shocking admission that he had not always been faithful to his wife Dorothea Hurley throughout their 35-year marriage. Perhaps as a result, Hurley was absent from a New York City screening of the docuseries last week.