CRUSH vs BOUNCE

Bounce is the more curious record and more interesting to dig into, whereas Crush is better as an album, as it flows much better and has a more focused theme. It's tough to decide, though. The main portion of Crush indeed sounds like late 90s pop rock, but decidedly safe so, and while executed well, it's not as curious as the more unlikely borrowings of Bounce (7 string riffing?). Also, while it is a more focused record, Crush is also half a solo album as well, so the band unity is hardly in place. And the one problem Crush has is that it's basically IML plus album tracks. The rest of the album sounds way different.

Also, no, you cannot combine the two to make a great album. Bounce's direction is scattered enough as it is; Hook Me Up or Undivided would sound seriously out of place on a "Crush +" album. I guess you could add Misunderstood.

I dunno, to me it's down to:

It's My Life
Thank You For Loving Me (best power ballad they did after the 90s by far)
Two Story Town
Just Older (but mostly due to its status; not the biggest fan myself)
One Wild Night

versus

Undivided
Misunderstood
Right Side Of Wrong (better "epic" track than Next 100 Years IMO)
Bounce

On the other hand, there's more track on Crush I don't care about at all (I Got The Girl, She's A Mystery, Save The World) than on Bounce.

What an album that is.
Superb

No solo and actually used rehashed lyrics from IBTFY.
Hate TYFLM with a passion

You seem such a happy soul

I dunno what to choose. Probably Crush. It's easier to listen too. I find Bounce is too much of a yo-yo effect.

Both the poorest two albums post 2000 for me possibly.

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The last thing I want to do is turn this into a Warrant topic... but they might be the best 80s band (Jovi aside)...

Janie Lane was a writer/poet, played multiple instruments, great vocalist, and there really isn't a bad song by them... Janie was great at putting hooks on hooks... (Wrote Cherry Pie in a day because the record company wanted Love In An Elevator)...

They/He never got any real credit or respect but he was a true artistic musician... it's a shame and what ultimately lead to his destruction...

I would suggest Dog Eat Dog to all you Jovi fans who like that old school style... It's like These Days meets Blood On The Bricks... or like a Slave To The Grind with catchy hooks... If you like that Cherry Pie / Uncle Toms Cabin style, it's just more of that... But on steroids...

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I find it amazing how Jon could go from brilliant to clueless... He wrote Blaze, and most of KTF (especially when you include all those unreleased box set tracks). Him and Richie solely write These Days (for the most part)... The production is outstanding of which I credit Jon, for being a Co producer...

After a few years off, Crush is all all over the place and unfinished. Then Bounce has all these outside writers....

WTF happened????

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Maybe he had run out of good ideas for a song. It could possibly be due to how many newer songs in this generation lack those stuff that IBTFY and possibly TD has.

Nowadays it's more like "This plant it costs so much money I went to school never went back".
Before it was more like "I'll cry a thousand rivers for you and those days are never back again".

10 songwriters and 10 producers nowadays for only one song can happen often.
Also to stay popular and in the charts could be a reason for them writing songs like Bounce or THINFS.

Yeah, it still amuses me how in the "VH-1 Ultimate Albums" broadcast (ca. 2001/02) Jon says:
And from that period on that's exactly what they were doing

Aloha !

I'm voting Crush. Crush sounded the way it did because it's what they wanted it to sound like. It's just as all over the place as Bounce is, but it sounds a lot more natural because of them being in touch with the current music scene and thus it doesn't sound as forced as Bounce.

I've a feeling how, after Crush was released, they just stopped listening to whatever was out there and were fed the latest hit albums by Ebbin. During the recording of Crush, Britpop had died and boy and girlbands showed up. And instead of trying to take something decent out of it, all they could do was just copy things, thus drum loops were incorporated and so were the extra layers of guitars in drop D.

There's a reason why a lot of music fans couldn't take bands like Linkin Park, Kid Rock and Creed seriously as it's all just dumbed down from whatever was out there in the nineties, it really was more of the same. It's also why HAND sounds more inspired and consistent. Somehow, once nu metal died and a small resurrection of real guitar bands took place in America, it resurrected Jon's interest in nowadays music as well.

No it's what they've always been doing. It's just that back in the nineties, rock was still popular so fewer pop elements were incorporated to make it to the charts.

Keep the Faith has a drastic change in sound exactly because the eighties sound was done. These Days sounds a lot more organic due to grunge and britpop influences. Once you start listening to the big albums from 1993 and 1994 you'll hear where These Days came from. There's influences from Tori Amos, Aerosmith, Stone Temple Pilots, Oasis and the Cranberries on These Days as much as the Backstreet Boys and Alanis Morisette inspired them during Crush. It's just that most who've grown up with These Days never cared for the other bands out there and have never listened to most albums released at the same time. But 'ey, try to piss on These Days and tell a Bon Jovi fan here it's not very original either and you'll be crucified on this board.

Although I do think their creative river slowly started to run dry, the idea that Bon Jovi's only just now started to copy bands is an illusion. It's always been that way.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Ebbin was hired for Crush precisely because he was good with drumloops and the like. This was in, what, 1999? Plus even Destination Anywhere features them aplenty. For all the ill-led modern influences the band had during that era, drumloops were the one they'd been using for the longest time (even if it dates the album a ton).

Linkin Park were, as weird as that sounds, a highly innovative band that actually utilized loops and effects in creative ways. The reason they were hated is precisely because they did not fit in with the tough guy persona nerdy metalheads and angry bikers alike had developed as part of the genre's identity over the years (they even had a rapper - rap and metal were pretty much opposing tribes in the early 2000s). Yeah, they were never a metal band, but they were lumped in with them, and that challenged the identity of metalheads. They were a pop rock band, but they sure didn't sound like Korn, Limp Bizkit or whoever nu metal act that came before them. They were hated for the same reason emo was hated in punk circles, because it actually was something different. Lots of old scene guys took offense to that, and now both genres are a retro show.

Kid Rock was mostly a rapping crossover act then; the most famous guitar riff he used was sampled; and then a redneck folk singer, so not sure how he fits into that equation. I hear neither Metallica samples nor rapping on Bounce.

And Creed were made fun of because of the lyrics and the religious image mostly - Alter Bridge, who feature the same music writer as Creed, were super respected super quickly.

Plus it's not like Oasis wrote complex songs, or broke new ground. Or is that precisely the reason they never broke big in the US and were over as a cutting edge band by album number three? I disagree with the approach to use complexity as the reason for musical staying power. Blues has been around for how long? And if that's not mainstream enough for you, EDM is dominating the clubs still.

Also, HAND has Avril Lavigne guitars (not that her first record is in the same musical style as her last, but whatever). Not sure how that is less offensive, but I agree, it fits the band's musical identity better (and just has better songs). There's a Lindsay Lohan song that sounds like a HAND outtake that Shanks co-wrote and produced (it's on Youtube, check "Nobody Till You").

Agreed that TD is just as much a product of its era as Crush and Slippery were. It's just that up to TD, there was a straight line of development with increased maturity, whereas Crush marked a turning point (although stuff like The Hardest Part Is The Night is more serious than anything on Slippery).