Guy Sings 'Living On A Prayer' To Himself, The Entire Park Joins Him

There are several legendary songs that have the magical power to make everyone else sing along. One of these is Jon Bon Jovi’s Living On A Prayer.

Odds are, if you start singing it in public, someone else will join you. That’s what one man experienced when he starting singing Living On A Prayer while sitting on a bench. The man’s voice enchanted the people around him and pretty soon the entire park was singing along with him.

Matej Priteržnik posted the video on YouTube and got over 895k views. People absolutely loved it because of the sense of community you get when you watch the clip.

Bored Panda spoke to Matej about the video he uploaded. He noted that it's not his original video but one he got from a friend and forgot about for some time. He uploaded it when he was checking the media on his phone some time ago.

Matej told us that he felt he just had to "share that powerful moment" so that "everyone can see that there is compassion in this world."

"One persona can change everything," he said. "This video is amazing and highlights the humanity and community that exist deep in us all."

In Matej's opinion, these are things that nobody can ignore but may have forgotten about. He also stressed that he didn't make any money from the video and simply wanted to share the message with the world.

Living On A Prayer was released in 1986, sold over 800k physical copies in the US, and was downloaded over 3 million times as of 2013. What’s more, the original video has more than 640 million views on YouTube as of January 2020.

The interesting thing about Living On A Prayer is that the song may not even have existed. That’s because Jon Bon Jovi didn’t like the original recording. Fortunately, lead guitarist Richie Sambora talked to him, convinced him it was good, and persuaded him to rework the song with a new bassline.

One of the reasons why the song was (and still very much is) such a hit is because of how personal it was to the songwriters.

For instance, the co-writer of the song Desmond Child explained the close relationship between the lyrics and the people behind the music.

“I think that each person, there was something autobiographical—for Jon with his relationship with wife Dorothea because they were high school sweethearts. In my case, I had a girlfriend that I started my first band with, called Desmond Child & Rouge. Her name was Maria Vidal.”

He continued: “I stayed home writing songs, and she worked as a waitress at a place called Once Upon a Stove. They called her Gina because she reminded them of Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida. So we started the song off with Johnny and Gina because Johnny was my original name. And Jon said, ‘I can't be singing about Johnny. My name's Johnny.’ It was like, ‘OK... Tommy then. Tommy and Gina.’ And that's where Tommy and Gina were born.”