CRUSH vs BOUNCE

cool, I just can't hang with songs like Thank You For Loving Me, She's A Mystery and I Got The Girl.
Cohesiveness never mattered to me.

To me cohesiveness and narrative of the album is very important, but Crush for starters has very little of it. It is disjointed in the same vain as Bounce, but less forced maybe. The most cohesive album is possibly HAND, even too much so some interesting songs (Novocaine, I Am e.g.) gets lost in the loudness war and completely flat identical production throughout

Their best album is These Days imo and I find that album to be all over the place. In addition to the excellent songwriting and performances, part of the reason I love it so much is it's diversity.
The previous poster said they thought Crush was cohesive to them so I guess it's all up to the listener in the end as it should be.

I think if you take out IML, Crush is pretty coheesive.

Well These Days is diversive in types of songs and ways of creativity, but it's very consistent in production choices and overall feel of the album and what it conveys. Crush for me is a collection of global hit and few goods songs followed by B-sides trash that Jovi would never before consider putting on official release, with no compact theme and varying mixing choices. Bounce on the other hand has very strict dichotomy: aggressive and drop-D versus complete inoffensive loop pop. Tie in Creed and nu-metal influences and 9/11 forced topic and you have material in conflict with itself. But, in bigger picture, Bounce is not so bad. Crush, though, was the very start of modern Jovi sound where 2 or 3 songs carry the album and band (both studio and/or live), while the rest is complete filler

Some VERY good points here.

These Days - A few years ago I really sunk in and appreciated that album's production. Styalistically it's different bu I think you're right about the cohesive-ness in the production. The way Richie's vocals pan slightly left, some of the guitar tracks too, it almost sounds like you're standing right between Jon and Richie when they sing together.

Bounce - Yeah there's dichtomy between the harder edge songs, dichtomy behind the pop/rock acoustic leaning tracks and dichtomy between the story-telling epic songs but to me, there's no album dichtomy. Crush minus IML has the same light rock vibes with a few uptempo songs and a few ballads but at no point does it sound like I'm listening to three different bands like with Bounce.

I don't know who decided to put Joey instead of STANDING in the album. 🫠

I like Joey

Joey is dreadful. The CEO has made some horrible choices like leaving Neurotica off of Crush.

I adore Neurotica but fully admit it wouldn't have worked on the album.