Bounce can be great album

Bounce is a very good album I think, darker songs work great, the storytellers are fantastic & the writing was brilliant for the most part. Open All Night, Love Me Back To Life & You Had Me From Hello spoil the album a little even if the songs are still decent enough. I know everyone says about how lame All About Lovin You is but I couldn't get enough of that song back when it was released as a single (they played it loads on our local stations) its musically refreshing, has a beautiful melody and what can I say I find it addictive. Two weeks until we start judging Lost Highway.....oh joy!

To this day I remember my very first reaction to hearing Bounce. WTF happened to Jons voice was all I could think. I had just seen the band on TV - the NFL Kickoff in Times Square - so I knew he could still sing. I guess I have never gotten past the lousy sound on that album. Perhaps as Hackster mentioned - it's the over-production that puts me off.

I have many bootlegs from that era and I'll take the bootlegs over the album any day. Maybe I should try to put together a "live" Bounce album from the best of the bootlegs and see how that goes. Unfortunately - there were several songs that never were played live.

Kathleen

Same here. Apart from Love Me Back To Live which is by far the worst song theyve ever written imo. And yes the production sucks. There are quite a few really great tunes on it though.

Apart from the production, which has been their weakest since the debut or maybe Fahrenheit, I still really really like "Bounce". It has taken me the longest time to get into a Bon Jovi album with this one (more than half a year), and I still have some regrets, but ever since I love to come back to it. It works as a unit. When HAND came out I thought it was better than BOUNCE, but it's just the better production... songwise I prefer "Bounce". While HAND has some weak tracks on the second half ("I am" being the worst and most uninspired song I can think of - wonder why so many people love it), the songs and the feeling of "Bounce" is just cooler. And yes, I like the flow of it. Of course the album is not the perfect masterpiece, but it had definately the potential to be one, whch HAND doesn not have. While HAND is (exceptions included) a POP album, "Bounce" is a ROCK album.
Back then I guess I was expecting "Crush Part II", but looking back I'm glad they didn't.

For the ballads: I LOVE "All about loving you". I remember being very disapointed at first, because it was too much pop and less of a "real" Bon Jovi ballad. But it's so very addictive and straight to the point. This is the only song where I can excuse an adlip when there should be one. It's all being done in 3 minutes 40 seconds. Amazing! And I'm not a big fan of pop ballads...

"You had me from hello" has become one of my secret favourites. The sound and the feeling are just fantastic.

"Open all night" might the weakest tune - on the album. The song itself is pretty good, but why did they make it sound like that. And why did nobody tell Jon to sing it again - especially the horrible ending. It just doesn't fit his post-2000 voice.

Listening to "Right Side Of Wrong" I regret that they didn't do the ending like on the demo version of it. On the album it ends much too soon which is a shame. The solo is kind of uninspired, good song though. But in no way Dry County part 2.

And the underrated "Love Me Back To Life"... this is one of the songs that suffer from bad production. The verse is just great - it gets me every time. And I love the orchestral parts.

One more regret: "Undivided" is overshadowed by the liveversion from Shepherd's Bush. I wonder why (in comparison) they put such a little passion into the recording. The ending is a great idea, to end with acoustic guitars and strings, but every time I listen to it it sounds like "getting the job done". Took some time to get used to it. But great song, though I'm also not a big fan of the whole 9/11 thing.

I sooo agree with you on You Had Me From Hello. I liked this song from the beginning. I was surprised that this song, for the most part, got such a negative reaction from fans.

deb

I actually like the song, and still listen to it often, just to me it doesn't seem o live up to it's potential.

You're welcome then.

I tend to adore songs that are not what you could call fan-favourites: Woman In Love, Fear, If That's What It Takes, Two Story Town, Mystery Train, She's A Mystery, I Got The Girl, Love Me Back To Life, You Had Me From Hello...

Just with "I am" it's the other way around...

I like "I Am" because I can kind of relate to the message because the song in kind of (in reverse) how I feel about my friends (IE: They're in he singing role)

It's not the message I can't relate to, it's the music. Too plain and simple to be put on a BJ album.

'I am' is possibly one of their worst songs ever in my opinion. Its going pretty normal at the start but by the chorus i almost puked. Its a TERRIBLE chorus, so boring and an awful melody if it can even be called that. You just cant shout 'I AM!' and expect it to sound right. And the lyrics are boring. The one poor track of HAND.

As for Bounce, poor album overall but some great highlights such as The Distance. Undivided could have been MUCH better, make it a bit longer, have the live intro and make it a bit more epic sounding. And add the live outro solo onto the distance and you make a great song even better. Everyday is great, but at 3 mins its missing something. Joey was interesting and fresh sounding, Right side of wrong is good but the solo is uninspiring and very repetitive. Rest of the album gets old very quickly and i very rarely listen to the others.

andi