Bon Jovi 2000-2005

Preface: I'm by no means a diehard fan and this topic has been discussed in the past but people's preferences change.

I feel like I'm in a minority here but I genuinely like the pop-rock feel to 'Misunderstood' and 'I Want To Be Loved' and the latter half of HAND in general.

I get the impression they were chasing the boy band trend at the time but I think Misunderstood is somewhat underrated as a track (my favourite).

How has the 2000-2005 material of the band held up for you? Do you listen to it a lot?

These are just some impressions and thoughts. What do you think of those pop-rock songs and do you prefer/dislike them compared to the (relatively) heavier tracks like HAND and WDR.

There are a few songs on each of those albums that I like but none of those albums are half as good as These Days. Bounce is what made me rethink whether to buy the next album. Songs like "All About Lovin' You" and "You Had Me From Hello" make me want to throw up.

I have some mixed feelings about this era of the band. Crush was the first album that I awaited the release of all excited and everything, from 96 onward is when I started getting into the band and buying the back catalog. I'll always have a connection to crush because of that, but I don't know, I guess I was just expecting too much out of that album. When I went back to listen to it a few years later I found it fresh and enjoyable. Bounce was also a mixed bag, I loved some songs, wasn't much into others and while enjoyable, if I never listen to Everyday, Missunderstood, Two story town, Say it isn't so, love me back to life, and so one, I don't think I would miss them.

Now with HAND, some people hate this album, I love it! I love the energy of it, I love the tour where they sometimes played 8 songs of it in one night, the cover, the promo shows everything, it will always be one of Jovi's most underrated albums to me. What's really curious about this era is how they hardly let the public breath through releases. Every year that didn't have an album of brand new material, had to have a live album, a TLFR or boxed set. I mean, I'm not really complaining but they did go a bit overkill on these years....

They were okay for me....At the time, I knew something was missing but really couldn't figure it all out... now when I look back on them and compared them to what we have today, they were brilliant times...

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I wasn't a Bon Jovi fan during those times, I was a little kid but I remember seing Have A Nice Day on TV and thinking it's a cool track. I had no ideea at the time that the guys who were singing HAND were the same "girls" who sang Livin On A Prayer and Bad Name )

There are some tracks from HAND that I really enjoy listening to : Bells Of Freedom, HAND, Novocaine, DLS. The other ones are meh... I used to love WSYCGH a few years ago but I played the shit out of it and now I rarely listen to it, maybe once or twice in 2-3 months. I wish Nothing would've made it on the album since I really enjoy that one far more than any other track on HAND..maybe except Bells Of Freedom.

Crush - this is not a bad album, I like most songs that are on it but it doesn't contain anything special. TST, Captain Crash, Next100Years, Just Older, Say It Isn't So are all cool tracks but these aren't the songs that I would show someone who isn't a BJ fan to try and make them take an interest in the band.

Bounce - This one also contains a few cool tracks like The Distance, Right Side Of Wrong, Everyday but nothing special. The tracks I love the most from the Bounce era are in fact bonus tracks, We Can Dance and Another Reason To Believe.

Overall the albums from that era are not bad..they each contain a few cool songs but the rest of them seem like fillers.

This was the era that my Bon Jovi fandom started and reached its all time high. Bought Crush in 2000 and highly anticipated Bounce and very highly anticipated Have a Nice Day, then between 2006/07, my passion for this band dipped. This was I think around the time a country-fused album was in the works and "(You Want to) Make a Memory)" was about to be released. After that, my fandom was on quite a slippery slope to the point where now I'm not so excited about a new album anymore.

As for the albums/music themselves, after bringing myself up to speed with pretty much everything the band had done between '84-'98, I knew it was not on the same level as the earlier albums, and wondered why Jon's voice sounded off, and with each new album I anxiously waited for more moments of brilliance and that the band would deliver a good, solid hard rock album with great guitar solos and meaningful lyrics. That never happened.

But I do much prefer Crush, Bounce and Have a Nice Day over the albums that were to follow, with Bounce being the winner of the bunch for me. There were some poor single choices, some of which were tailored to be singles to begin with, which doesn't help, but I didn't mind some of the poppier tracks like "Misunderstood" from time to time.

Yeah, pretty much that. Got into the band during the Bounce-era (which featured lots of cool promo appearances - acoustic shows and stuff like that), was super excited about HAND (easily their best since the "comeback"), but bummed by Lost Highway. They did release something every year, but I personally only bought the studio albums.

They definitely still seemed to give a damn during that era. The albums now are more casual, but still as calculated as ever, which often results in "ah, it's good enough for the fans" nonsense. Remember Jon removing "This Ain't Love, This Is Life" from The Circle?

Crush had a ton of effort, it just wasn't an album I enjoyed a lot. The solo-leftover tracks in particular just lack energy, and the production has only become worse with age.

Just to be clear, I have nothing at all against Lost Highway. It had its moments but for me it was nothing to really get excited about. Maybe also due to the fact that it was released less than 2 years after Have a Nice Day, so maybe for me the dust hadn't settled enough yet.

I think they may have had more passion in the first half of the 2000's (the era in question), regardless of what people's opinions are of their output then. That to me has been lacking since Lost Highway. I don't know if it's nostalgia or what but whenever I revisited the more recent Bon Jovi catalogue, it's the first 3 albums from that decade that pull me in more than the latter. Crush, despite its slushy, poppy production, seemed more "real" to me and Jon kinda still sounds decent. Bounce, despite the gash like "All About Lovin' You", sounds like a band trying to have a bit more fun than last time and it definitely rocked more. I love how much heavier it is in parts compared to other albums. As for Have a Nice Day, for a long time I used to see it as a huge improvement overall. Less studio effects, more consistent with rockers and somehow more honest, but in recent years I've thought less of it. It sounds the most manufactured compared to the previous 2 albums, like a Busted album.

since 2000 all albums have had gems and utter garbage.

I tend to find when I dislike a Jovi song (wsycgh, aaly etc) I really dislike it.