Best post 2000 album so far

HAND
Although Bounce & Crush would be in there at a close second.

Have A Nice Day of course.

Besides the title track that even being a live my life type of song, is a good song, there's also Bells Of Freddom, WSYCGH, I Am, Dirty Little Secret, Last Man Standing and Novocaine. The other songs are not bad also.

Have a nice day gets my vote!
Lost highway is second
bounce and crush are joint last, I hate the production if best so much so I rarely listen to either!

I really think that in the 2000s every new Bon Jovi album has always been worse than the ones before it. The band just got steadily worse and worse until they reached their nadir with Lost Highway, an album so atrocious that they couldn't possibly go any lower than it.

Basically, Crush was the last Bon Jovi album that had potential to be a good album, and it has always angered me that they failed with this record. They had many good songs in the sessions for this album, this was the last album on which Jon could still sing well and this could have been a great rock album if executed right; so it's sad that they compiled the track listing so poorly and produced the album poorly. Still, there are four good songs in here (and a few more decent tunes - definitely the songs are stronger than on any other BJ00 album) and Say It Isn't So is not only clearly their best song of the 2000s, but it stands very well against all old Bon Jovi material too. Crush is their only album of the 2000s that I still own.

Bounce was a big load of crap, and with this album I lost faith in Bon Jovi. I wrote my view of this album in some thread here not too long ago: their shortest and most unoriginal songs, irritating synthesizer effects, incredibly lame and cheesy ballads, It's My Life clones... etc.

They got worse with Have A Nice Day: the whole album is so bland, uninspired and soulless that it just repulses me. The title track is pure parody of this band, it's really nothing more than a piece of comedy, the ballads are as predictable as ever, and their contrived attempt to "rock" with this album was doomed to fail, seeing that this music is so inoffensive and lightweight that it makes the Backstreet Boys look like Cannibal Corpse. I used to think that Last Man Standing was an alright rock song, but its lyrics are really so hypocritical that nowadays I can't take the song at all seriously anymore.

I never bought Lost Highway, but I heard the album once and some of the key songs a few more times. The title track is one of the worst songs ever made by anyone: it's amazing if they don't realise what a stinking cliché this "life is a road" thing is, and throughout the album both the lyrics and the music are so boring, inane and banal that I simply couldn't listen to it at all. I guess my music tastes have changed too much because I can no longer stomach ridiculous "party songs" like We Got It Going On and these sugar-coated cheese-fest ballads that they always do. It's not really my problem if some of you want to listen to lyrics like "life changes like the weather", but that stuff is just not for me.

This is the only line in your entire post that I completely agree with
I adore SIIS.

I agree those are definitely three of their best post 2000 songs, but I voted for HAND.

CRUSH. It's their most creative album this decade - musically it's very rich and diversified, and "One Wild Night" and "Mystery Train" are among my favourite songs ever. Also "Two Story Town" is very good, so is "Just Older", "Say It Isn't So" and the overplayed "Cpt. Crash". Hell, I even like "I Got The Girl" and "She's A Mystery". Of course I totally embraced this album when it came out after the 4 year long wait. I'm not so happy with the overall production, but you can hear that they took care about every song, and though there were less solos than before they took a break, you hear more of all band members playing than on any other following album.

On the 2nd spot is HAVE A NICE DAY. I'm really fond of it lately. "Novocaine" and "Last Man Standing" are among their best tracks, musically and lyrically. I'm also a big fan of "I Want To Be Loved" and "Complicated" - yes, it's the most arrant IML rip off, but the chorus is just great, can't help it. I even started to like "Story Of My Life", and I so much hated it when it came out. Weakest track has to be "Wildflower", and I wish that "Who Says", being better than its reputation, had a more edgy sound. "I Am" started to grow on me, but it took me four years, I would have prefered "Nothing" or "Unbreakable" or "Dirty Little Secret" instead, it's just so boring. Oh, on the minus list, the album contains their most horrible song line ever: "God makes no mistakes..." Ouch.

3rd place for BOUNCE. Having a horribly weak production, I still honour it for its heavy sound and some good songs, "Undivided", "Everyday", "Hook Me Up", "Bounce"... I never had a problem with the flow, while this album took the longest for me to get into. I was so angry about how they kept the songs short, last time we had a song longer than 5 minutes. The demos that were released from the session are overrated as hell I think, but replacing "Open All Night" by a finished version of "Postcards From The Wasteland" would have made the album much better. I don't listen to it so often, but when I do I like very song in its own way, yes, even "All About Loving You" and "You Had Me From Hello". And the tour was just great, the two shows I've seen 2003 were among their best (from a total of 11 shows I've seen since 1995). The energy of the band was amazing.

Last spot for LOST HIGHWAY. I don't wanna bash it completely, but it's a bit scary how it could turn out so dull, keeping in mind how inspired they were. Only two songs stand out imo, but "Make A Memory" made it into my personal top 10, and the title track is a classic too. I never got the hype about "Whole Lot Of Leaving", while I think "I Love This Town" and "We Got It Going On" are decent BJ tunes. Not that they couldn't have been any better, but still. Some songs just sound so rushed, unfinished, unoriginal, while not being completely bad (One Step Closer, Everybody's Broken, Seat Next To You, The Last Night). When it came out I thought "Summertime" was the silliest song they ever released, now I quite like it, but it's far from being a masterpiece. Same with that silly duett with Leann Rimes. "Any Other Day" is a bit overrated too. It lacks a lot of substance, and their new recording style with Jon & Richie recording a demo and only bringing in the others later to play their part doesn't do any good. The most boring BJ album of this decade.

Wow, now I wrote more than I intended to...

i honestly like all the post 2000 releases but crush was the first jovi i ever owned so i have soft spot for it.

I’m sure nobody is going to agree with me here, but my best post-2000 album is LH. Crush, Bounce and HAND were a pathetic attempt to modernize their old sound – resulting in albums that were uninspired and cheesy. Crush and HAND at least have a few good songs on them (unlike Bounce)…but, as albums, they all get an F. Some of the songs on these records are just embarrassingly horrible. All 3 albums sound like the guys didn’t even try…like they were just trying to reproduce a “hit”-formula, which failed miserably.

Now, I get that if you like Bon Jovi for their ability to rock, LH is not going to do it for you. Not to say that I don’t want the guys to rock…but, mostly, at this stage, I just want good songs and an album that I can put on at track 1 and listen through til the end without having to skip tracks. LH is the only post-2000 album where I can do that. Granted, I have to be in the mood for it, but I can put that album on in the car and listen to it all the way through. Crush, Bounce and HAND, I won’t even put on because I know I’ll be skipping every other song, at best. And, though the style is different from what we’re used to on LH – it at least, to me, showed a little growth/creativity…which I was longing for after 2000-2005!

Obviously I would love it if The Circle came out and was their best album ever. I’m certainly not expecting this…but if it is at least an album that I can put on and enjoy through all 12 tracks, I’ll be satisfied. Crush, Bounce and HAND have so little on them that I can stomach, I actually ended up making a mix playlist of just the songs from those three albums (including b-sides) that I can stand (not even like), and when I put that mix on I still find myself skipping songs.

I did want to vote for 2. I voted for Have A Nice Day but Bounce would be up there also.