Grammy Award-winning rocker Jon Bon Jovi is honoring veterans with his new song, entitled, “Unbroken.” Bon Jovi wrote the song for the new documentary, To Be of Service, which is about veterans living with PTSD and their service animals.
“I was asked to write this song, and it was going to be a difficult task, because I haven’t served in the military, because the goal is honesty,” said Jon Bon Jovi on Monday to CBS This Morning hosts Gayle King and Tony Dokoupil. The singer noted that the song was written through the eyes of a veteran.
Bon Jovi added that he spoke with the film’s director, who gave him “some key, anecdotal lines that the soldiers had discussed with him,” in order to better write the lyrics to his new song.
Watch below:
“You have to be honest if you’re going to take on this task, and be truthful in its delivery, so that the men and women who did serve will feel pride when they hear the song,” said Bon Jovi.
For the next twelve months, all of the song’s proceeds will go to the Patriotic Service Dog Foundation — a non-profit organization that provides highly trained service dogs for veterans, at no cost to them.
“It’s eighteen months now I’ve been stateside, with this medal on my chest, but there are things I can’t remember, and there are things I won’t forget,” reads the lyrics of Unbroken. “I lie awake at night, with dreams the devil shouldn’t see. I want to scream but I can’t breathe, and, Christ, I’m sweating through these sheets.”
“Where’s my brothers? Where’s my country? Where’s my ‘how things used to be’?” the lyrics read. “God of mercy, God of light, save your children from this life. Hear these words, this humble plea, for I have seen the suffering, and with this prayer I’m hoping, that we can be unbroken.”
Listen below:
“My service dog’s done more for me, than the medication would. There ain’t no angel that’s coming to save me, but even if they could,” the lyrics continue. “Today twenty-two will die from suicide, just like yesterday, they’re gone. I live my life for each tomorrow, so their memories will live on.”
King shared her takeaway from the documentary on Monday’s show, noting that the revelations were “overwhelming.”
“When I watch the documentary and I heard the song, it’s like you captured everything so brilliantly,” said King, “because they talk about what the dogs mean to them serving. Twenty-two people a day die from suicide.”
“They said the dogs are better than medication, than therapy, than a prosthetic,” she added. “I looked at that, and I found it overwhelming — the difference that the dogs make.”
Bon Jovi added that he was “trying to find hope at the end of the journey” in his song, and that one realization which stood out to him was that each veteran said that they would “do it all again.”
“To think that each of these men and women said the one thing is that ‘I would do it all again’ — when you’re making a record, usually you end it with the chorus,” said Bon Jovi. “In this case, it was such a powerful line, that while we were recording it, we said, no, this is the end of the song. The journey ends here, with the positivity.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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