Keeping the Faith or just Crushed? --- an examination of the later work of Bon Jovi
I'd like to depart from the usual format of reviewing one album at a time, and in this entry I want to look at three* of the later Bon Jovi releases, to perhaps counter the somewhat widely-held belief that the boys from New Jersey are no longer a force to be reckoned with, which I hotly dispute. Sure, the glory days of “Slippery when wet” and “New Jersey” are long gone, but the band are older (like all of us), wiser (can't claim that in MY case!) and know their audience has grown older with them, and I would hypothesise are changing to meet the requirements and tastes of those who used to rock out to “You give love a bad name” and don their stetsons for “Wanted”, or who jumped up and down at the gigs when “Born to be my baby” was played, and swayed to “I'll be there for you.”
(* Note: due to the length of this entry exceeding apparently the maximum allowed for one post, I have to split it into two, so the review for "The Circle" will be in a separate entry, posted next)
Bon Jovi are, I'm sure, reaching new fans with their music, both old and new, but it is the ones who bought “Slippery” in their millions that put them where they are, and these I would imagine the boys are still writing, and changing for. Change is generally good, as long as it's productive change, and to be honest I have yet to come across a bad Bon Jovi album. So here I present three offerings from their “later period”, as my contention that Jon and the boys still rock with the best of them.
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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
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