What About Now: First Impressions

I've gotta say, I favour the new stuff over the old. I got hooked onto Bon Jovi through HAND and have always benchmarked future releases against this record. I think Crush and Bounce are a pile of turd but The Circle is fabulous. A solid second place from me. I also have an affinity for LH but would rate What About Now ahead of it giving it a solid 3rd spot in my favourite records.

8/10 WAN
9/10 The Circle
7/10 LH
10/10 HAND
4/10 Bounce
6/10 Crush

100% agree

Can I ask how old you are? Not being mean. Genuinely interested.

You still like the old stuff, right?

Sure, I'm 18.

Yeah I like the old stuff too.

Its better than i expected after the snippets. Decent enough release, fits in nicely into their catalogue.

OH THANK GOD. For a second I thought we'd have to send you off to the guillotine as a punishment for your nonconformity.

I'm only on my second play through.. with the first being on the go at work. I'm not about to start throwing numbers up.

My initial reaction was that I have to get used to hearing "Because" and "What About Now" as part of the album rather than the individual songs I've been playing for a few weeks now. I wished I had held off a bit on those two just as I did with the BBC recordings of the rest of the tracks. I just didn't want the live performances embedded in my head before hearing the studio versions, much less the vision of Jon standing there strumming away to tracks that should have him strutting around throttling the mic stand. The title track got the most play. I wouldn't say I loved it so much as I just loved having some tidbit from the album besides the lead single. I do think I'm going to love it as part of the whole of the album. This happened with We Weren't Born To Follow, which I absolutely did not care about prior to the release of The Circle. I enjoyed it as part of the album.

I'm With You is the one track of those performed live from the album that I haven't heard at least once. The first go round it just didn't lend itself to the mood.. probably because I was grabbing lunch and tearing off to work. Not really the ideal time for a first time play-through.

Pictures of You was immediate and has only grown more with each listen. Lyrically it reminds me of the KTF period.. as in Letters to a Friend. It is definitely a shining star on the album for me...which is bit cause for concern given that it hasn't been played live. I love the outro "whoas."

I'm going to give it time to soak it up..... but I'm pretty sure I'll rank it as high as I did The Circle if not higher. The early reaction to the album from this board based on the live performances and then the 90 second clips was that a good lot made up their mind about it already. That's a damn shame. I can understand the production complaints... but there are some very good songs on this album that deserve better recognition. There are less cringe moments for me on this album compared to Lost Highway or The Circle and where there are... they are mild.

Army of One has been prone to over-reaction/exaggeration on this board. If it's to be this album's "Who Says" or "We Got It Going On".... I'll definitely take it over both of those. It works well on the album for me. It definitely went over well cranked up and pumping on my car system while speeding on the freeway.

I'll have plenty of thoughts on the rest of the tracks. At this point I'm happy to say at least for me that despite my early misgivings on not being convinced I was going to like this album as well being annoyed with a tour being in progress so soon, I'm beginning to love the album and really looking forward to my show in April.

Even though you have been able to buy the track WAN for a while I haven't.
I bought the single in Jan out of loyalty to the band and cos the original release date of the album was near April.
It would have been easy to put live tracks from the bbc onto my iPod but I didn't want to. I've only heard IWY twice even though j love it.
I've listened to the 90s clips on iTunes once.
I want release day to be like it was in the day.
The Internet has spoiled all that.
It's like people streaming the Bowie album - what gave you got to look forward to on Monday???
I can't wait to get my hands on the Jovi Cd - it's late 80s all over again for me !!

I give it a 6,5. Way better than Bounce, HAND, LH or TC in my opinion.

It's a really average album, the production sucks!

The highlights of the album for me are:
- What About Now
- Pictures Of You (best song on the album)
- That's What The Water Made Me
- Thick As Thieves

Ok songs:
- I'm With You (production and less of dynamic ruins it for me)
- Amen
- Army Of One
- Beautiful World
- The Fighter

The rest is forgettable and I'll probably won't listen to them, unless when I'm forced to listen to them during a concert.

Forgettable songs:
- What's Left Of Me
- Room At The End Of The World
- With These Two Hands (do we really need Story Of My Life part 2?)
- Because We Can

5/10

The bonus songs and The Fighter don't fit the mood and sound of the album.