Do Bon Jovi have to please too many different fans?

Did someone just say Have a Nice Day was cheerful?!?! LMAO! But anyway, I'd agree with the OP on most points, except that HAND is VERY consistent. These Days only sounds consistant because they're all sadder songs. Song to song though it really isn't, save Hey God to SFTP.

It's not just musically, though, it's a problem with them in the press and live and so forth. There's four guys in the band, and Hugh, and nine studio albums that split into (imo) 4 fairly distinct eras (shittyish hair metal [BJ/7800], good hair metal [Slippery/NJ], moody/deep/grown-up/etc. [KTF/TD], and "we put the pop in pop rock" [Crush/Bounce/HAND]).

There's a lot of combinations of those that any given person could like. But they can only play so many songs per show, so they need to choose from

1. what's most popular
2. whatever it is they're promoting

so unless you're a Slippery/NJ and "[newest album]" fan, you're not getting what you want live.

And the media are going to do the same thing - focus on the more popular members who have something to promote. So not only are they not going to be trying overly hard to get EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH HUGH MCDONALD, they're not going to try at all to talk to David/Tico/Hugh when the band's off and Jon and Richie are still running around doing high-profile things. Plus there's no reason to talk to David/Tico/Hugh when the album's in early songwriting stages because...they don't write.

When you have a large fanbase and a fairly diverse sound, you're gonna either give someone the shaft or spread yourself too thin.

I would actually diagree with you on the last point. I think what they did wrong with the last 3 studio records is that they tried to be too much for too many. There's everything on those from plain dull pop to something close to art-rock. From thrashy riffs to cheesy piano...all on the same album. If they had done 3 albums - one heavy rock, one mid-tempo+country(the more poppy stuff) and one of story tellers+ballads, a lot of us might have been praising one record, slashing another one and be indifferent of a third.

Would that actually have been better?

I think so. I still stand by my statement that Bounce was too much for too many and HAND was not, but I'd love to see them do full albums of one style/genre. They didn't get COMPLETELY there with Have a Nice day but it was the closest they've come yet.

thing is since the pizza parlour track selections of the slippery era the tracklist has always been led by the record company/shoppers rather than the band. and as the old story goes, we wouldn't have heard prayer without it. so perhaps the band and jon especially aren't the right men for the album selection job...
but how come the companies have midjudged so badly recently? HAND was a step in the right direction, in my opinion, but why do the tracklistings look so transparent nowadays do you think?
x

I think you can still lump them into a category together. However diverse the songs on them may be, however diverse the three of them may be, they're all more heavily filtered through a pop screen than most of their other albums. You can listen to Bounce and recognize it as being from the same time period as Crush.

Maybe...although Undivided for example wouldn't have ever fitted on CRUSH...it doesn't fit on Bounce either thinking about it.

I'm not saying the songs were interchangeable, just that when you split the albums into categories, they're certainly in a category together.

I think it's kind of the opposite way around. It's more like too many differing groups of fans want a different kind of style from Bon Jovi. You have groups wanting to hark back to the old Slippery/NJ days. Some even want the BJ/7800 harder rock sound. Other groups want ballads on all albums. Then theres the group wanting their "Its my lifes" So I guess in essence yes you are correct they have too many groups to try and cater for so not everyone is going to be happy each album. The people who will be happy are the ones who are best catered for each album. It's lucky I am pretty diverse with my tastes and like to listen to an everchanging Bon Jovi. I don't get all scared at the though of the countryfied rock Bon Jovi.

In any band there will be albums you love and albums you don't like. I guess you just have to decide if the overall picture is one you like. I too have Jovi songs I think wtf were they thinking ... I don't really like the Bounce album bar one or two songs. But then I love "These Days" album with a passion.

Kat

Just remembered this tread. Now Bon Jovi have released a "country record". Do you think that may just mean we'll get a full-blown rock record some time in the future?