What Happened To Bon Jovi?

There are a couple of bands around today that are almost unrecognizable as to what they used to be.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers are one.  They used to be blazing buffalo hot without any sides for cooling down.  Another band that has gone down this path is the once glorious Bon Jovi.  Yes, bands evolve.  Yes, bands change and mature.  But do they have to become weak at the same time?  The first five Bon Jovi records stand out as some of the greatest in all of hard rock.  They were one of the most exciting bands on the planet.  You couldn’t beat an 80’s Bon Jovi concert.  I mean, they were just perfect.  High energy, non-stop for 2 hours.  Perfect firework choreography with an image to back it up.  And of course, the songs.  The songs rocked!!  And the songs that didn’t rock as hard had an unspoken passion behind them that made them enjoyable.  Every album from the self titled debut to ‘These Days’ deserves a solid placing in the rock pantheons.  Then they disappeared for five years.  Then they staged a huge comeback that would begin the devolution of the band for the next 17 years.  When ‘Crush’ came out it was gigantic.  And honestly, it’s a good record.  The two follow ups ‘Bounce’ and ‘Have a Nice Day’ aren’t bad either. It took a few years for the band to really bland up.  ‘Crush’ is also a really important record in the eventual downfall of the boy band.  At the time the music market was over saturated with manufactured pop acts and Bon Jovi came in and slammed the gavel on the bullshit.  Creating a selling market of hard rock for a new generation.  They kept up the momentum for half a decade but then something happened that the band never recovered from.  They did a country album, ‘Lost Highway’, and there was no going back.  It was bland, boring and a complete sell out move from a band that at one point in time was the most exciting on the planet.  Even when the group went back to rock with the follow up album ‘The Circle’ they couldn’t seem to capture the magic that made Bon Jovi what they are.  Or what they were I should say.  They’re just so boring and generic now.  Sure, they’ve always been a mainstream sounding band but now it’s just pathetic.  Eventually founding member and secondary core song writer Richie Sambora couldn’t take it anymore and left the band.  Then Jon Bon Jovi made what is in my opinion a second colossal mistake.  He kept the band going without Sambora.  The result would be the saddest excuse for a Bon Jovi album ever.  Even sadder than ‘Lost Highway.’  2016’s ‘This House is Not For Sale’ is a mess of an album.  It doesn’t even sound like the band anymore.  It just sounds like Jon Bon Jovi covering a bunch of songs by bands like Death Cab For Cutie and Mumford and Sons.  Just terrible!  It’s like a bowl of Ramen without the flavor pouch.  Where are the songs like ‘Always Run to You’, ‘Raise Your Hands’, ‘Bad Medicine’, ‘In ‘n Out of Love’, ‘Damned’, ‘Keep the Faith’, ‘Fear’?  I can keep the list going and going.  Of course, don’t expect any changes soon.  The ‘This House’ tour has been the highest grossing tour of 2017 so far.  Jon Bon Jovi will most likely be on the bland train for the rest of his career.  It’s proving lucrative after all.

High octane, high quality, exciting song writing.

They kept it going through the 90’s.  Even with a little refinement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bva_cxFr0NI

Then the new millennium happened.  And eventually the band would lose their spark completely.  This song is just awful!  It sounds like a bad country version of U2.  What happened to Bon Jovi?!

And it gets worse.  I hate the generic chorus and vocal chants.

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