Listening To The Entire Catalog Backwards

Update: Just finished Crush and Bounce with bonus tracks... I actually listened to these two albums in order.

I'm trying not to make these posts a song by song review but more so about general observations...

Crush: Just focusing on the main album tracks, not a horrible listen... There are definitely some moments of grandeur. The one thought that kept popping into my head is, 'how is this the follow-up to These Days?" and "is this the best after 5 years?" I get there were solo albums and movies but still.. Crush is the first album that lacked passion. It was Jon's easiest vocal band album to date but a lot of the songs were fun and bring energy... For that reason, it's not as horrible of an album as I last remembered... It's My Life did however save this album and band!!!

Bounce: This truly is a love / hate album... or should I say like / hate album... There are songs that literally sound like unfinished demos. Like, how is this on an actual release... but then I'm pleasantly surprised with others. Open All Night & You Had Me From Hello are truly great tracks. They should have finished this album as intended instead of changing its direction with the 911 tracks.

The bonus tracks: There are definitely some that should have made the albums and others that I get when they did make the cut. Once these songs are labeled as bonus tracks, they get an automatic pass... These songs weren't meant for us to hear but the band released them so I like to figure out things like the direction they were going in. Some of the writing is really good but they just can't get that catchy song out of them... We got so much material from this period.

Here is my post 2000 ranking:
1. Burning Bridges (which makes this my most favorite release since These Days)
2. THINFS
3. The Circle
4. HAND
5. What About Now
6. Crush
7. Bounce
8. Lost Highway
9. TLFR

The 90's are next: I created a Sex Sells album using The Box Set & Bonus tracks (live, listening party, b-sides, etc)... I also have an extended Crossroads EP using Box Set and Compilation tracks.

I'm looking forward to this.

Update:

Just completed listening to the songs from the Sex Sells sessions (Or songs identified between DA and Crush)... I could definitely pick a solid 12 songs from that time period to make a pretty good album... This could even be a separate post...

You can't really judge an album that never came out due to multiple factors but based on my top 12, I'm going to conclude that Sex Sells could have been a very fun summertime type album... I hear a lot of Southside Johnny in some songs, Jon sounds pretty good vocally, and even some cool lyrics with catchy verses...

I'm not really sure what I'd consider to be the first single. IMO this is really just a fun fan album... But again, there are some songs that were never even released yet... Someday You'll Ride Wild Horses or the title track, Sex Sells, and maybe 1 or 2 others that I'm not thinking of now... but of the songs released in the box, I'm extremely satisfied with most of them.

If I had to rank this album against my top post 2000 pick, Burning Bridges, I'd rank Sex Sells higher but nothing on here is better than Teardrop...

No particular order: (BTY, I don't think the listening party songs were the final album tracks)

1. Maybe Someday
2. The One That Got Away
3. Rich Man
4. You Can Sleep While I Dream
5. Last Chance Train
6. Crazy Love
7. All I Wanna Do Is You
8. These Arms Are Open All Night
9. River Runs Dry
10. I Get A Rush
11. Good Ain't Good Enough
12. Open All Night
13. Bonus Track 1 - Real Life
14. Bonus Track 2 - Shadow Dancing

I'm pretty sure 12.Open All Night is from '94. It was originally the title track when These Days was going to be called Open All Night.

Agreed. It very much has that Crossroad/early TD sessions sound all over it.

Interesting reading your posts but I'd hate this album.

Maybe Someday is cringe inducing cliche after cliche.
All I Wanna Do Is You is Bon Jovi at their least subtle which is an achievement.
These Arms Are Open All Night is completely ruined by the "Jones" line.
I Get a Rush is a rip off of Rocking All Over the World.

Some of the rest are fillers and there is nothing with single potential amongst those songs.

There are a few songs in there I like but, as an album, this would have buried Bon Jovi.

Very much agreed! I personally never got the fuss over these demos / outtakes since they never appealed to me in any way. Yeah, some might've been quite fun, but they also seemd pretty shallow overall.
So I kind of tend to believe the story that the record company "forced" a collaboration with Max Martin back in 1999 since there just didn't seem to be a potential hit single among any of these 30+ songs we know from that era.

Yup.

Best of the Sex Sells sessions made the final cut for Crush, end of story. Well maybe Stay over She's a Mystery but that's an exception...

People just assume that whatever we don't get is automatically better than the final result. Captain Crash would've been a hipster gem among diehards if it was some obscure outtake that was never officially released, nor played live

Got to agree, that tracklist would be a terrible, terrible album. The songs are simply not good enough. The boxset was suitable enough for the quality of most of them.

There's just nothing with any Oomph in there. Yeah maybe one or two could have swapped out the fillers like She's A Mystery, but the whole album of those - for the band - would have been disastrous. As a JBJ solo album with similar production to DA, possibly a different story.

This is actually a very good point...

I'm surprised to read all the hate for SS... This is the first time I'm revisiting these songs in a while and listening backwards might be different than listening forward but like I stated, it's sound like it could be a fun fan album...

Don't forget we are missing songs, some of the music is from the listening party, and are these songs even the masters? I just think there is potential... At the same time, I'm not a huge post 2000 fan so to me, these songs were somewhat refreshing...

If I finished These Days and DA first, I might have a totally different opinion...

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Well the box set ended up being the fun fan album to a point. At that stage they needed a killer comeback and most of those songs don't fit the bill. I mean they are all good in their own way, but the wholesale replacement of what turned out to be Crush just wouldn't have cut the mustard. A mixture of those and what we got possibly, but it would only be a few of those at best.