Bon Jovi Leaves Mercury Records After 32 Years

August 25

	"Here's the last song you can sell," Bon Jovi sings on Burning Bridges - his farewell song to Mercury Records, who he's been with for 32 years (one of the longest label marriages in music history). The title track of Burning Bridges, is a sing-along directed at Mercury Records with some pretty harsh lines: "After 30 years of loyalty/they let you dig the grave/now maybe you can learn to sing or strum along/Well I'll give you half the publishing/You're why I wrote this song." Bon Jovi told Billboard, "This hits it right in the head and tells you what happened. Listen to the lyrics because it explains exactly what happened. And that's that." Burning Bridges dropped as a fan album on Friday with 10 songs intended to accompany the band's tour in Southeast Asia. But as Jon Bon Jovi said it was more about fulfilling a final commitment to the label before he could get out of his contract. During his partnership with Mercury Records, now a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, Bon Jovi sold 21.8 million albums in the United States, five of which were No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200. Now that he's free, he hopes to start fresh with a new album and tour in the spring of 2016 and plans to finish recording the album by the end of 2015. “A lot happened”, Bon Jovi admits. “I have a lot of material to write about. Believe me, the new record is good. It’s pointed. It is something we are going to be very proud of in the spring when we put it out.” Here you can hear the title track of Burning Bridges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=129&v=s-UfWbhFHCc Read More: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6671183/bon-jovi-label-mercury-island-records-split