"Lower the Flag" is inspired by the 2019 Dayton shooting. Song has a lament that the news cycle will move on before there is even time to grieve. It concludes with the narrator reciting the names of cities caught in the crossfire, including Las Vegas, Sandy Hook Elementary, Orlando, Florida, and Columbine. Bon Jovi started to write this song on the day the shooting happened and wrote the first draft of the song over a period of two days. He continued tweaking it and realized that he did not have a proper title and the chorus for the song. He came up with the working title "Four Dead in Ohio", which is derived from the lyrics of the song "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash &amp; Young. When he wrote the song, Bon Jovi played the song for a group of people, including Shanks. When Bon Jovi rewrote the lyrics in a way that the last line repeated what the first line of the lyrics said, he came up with a title "Lower the Flag". The bridge of the song was different for Bon Jovi from a compositional point-of-view, but the rhythm of the melody was something easy to compose for him. When he finished with the writing, he went in the studio with McDonald, Torres and Shanks. Bon Jovi played the guitar and Torres played drums. While playing drums, Torres realized that drums were hindering the progress of the song, so the band decided to exclude them in the end.