574. Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet (1986)

















Track Listing

1. Let It Rock
2. You Give Love A Bad Name
3. Livin On A Prayer
4. Social Disease
5. Wanted Dead Or Alive
6. Raise Your Hands
7. Without Love
8. I'd Die For You
9. Never Say Goodbye
10. Wild In The Streets

Review

This album has got my favourite Bon Jovi song! Favourite as in slightly less shittier, Wanted Dead or Alive is thematically and musically like a cow-pat when compared to worm infested, pus ridden, bloody syphilitic human shit.

It is still shit, however. In fact the whole album is pretty bad, you can tell where they are coming from and why they are failing tremendously, some tracks derive their inspiration for Bruce Springsteen, but lack the musical or lyrical ability of the Boss. Examples of this are Living on a Prayer and particularly Wild In The Streets. Other tracks are simply lowest common denominator crap.

The album is relentlessly positive in its hope for a new world dawning with Reagenomics on the horizon (what gullible fools), an album with very little brains even (or particularly) when it tries to tackle big subjects, conservative, silly and which belongs on the bargain bin where you can find it these days. Still, unfortunately, and this reflects the bad taste of the Populus, at least 4 of these songs are classics heard over and over again, in order to exacerbate my suicidal tendencies, particularly Never Say Goodbye.

Track Highlights

1. Wanted Dead Or Alive
2. Livin' On A Prayer
3. You Give Love A Bad Name
4. Let It Rock

Final Grade

4/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The album went through various name changes during its inception, with Slippery When Wet being the final title conceived. According to Jon Bon Jovi in a DVD interview on the box set 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong, the albums working titles were Wanted Dead or Alive and later Guns N' Roses when Bon Jovi read a newspaper article about then-upcoming Los Angeles band Guns N' Roses and wanted to name the album after them.

Jon Bon Jovi was initially reluctant to include Livin' on a Prayer on the album, believing that it was not a good enough song. Richie Sambora was convinced it was a hit single in the making, and so the band re-recorded it, releasing the second version on the final album. Ironically, it became the band's most popular and well-known song, and was the #1 song of 1987. The song is referred to in Bon Jovi's 2000 single "It's My Life" among other songs. The original demo, which Jon Bon Jovi thought was not good enough for the album, can be found as a hidden track on the band's box set.

With this album's singles, Bon Jovi was the 1st hard rock band to ever have two consecutive #1 Hot 100 chart hits.

Slippery When Wet was the 1st hard rock album to spawn three Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 hits. The band would go on to break this record with New Jersey, which spawned five.

With Slippery When Wet, the band twice had the #1 single and the #1 album simultaneously, another hard rock first.

Wanted Dead Or Alive: