THE BEST SONG: Blood On Blood is the best one. It's a powerful and instrumentally impressive ode to friendship, a highlight of the album for many fans. A good second would be Bad Medicine, the ultimate Bon Jovi rock'n'roll song; it's very heavy and yet melodic, and fun lyrically. Out of several great songs a few songs that also deserve a mention are I'll Be There For You, Lay Your Hands On Me and Living In Sin.

OVERALL: New Jersey is a really great album. It's a very complete record with many absolutely terrific songs and hardly any bad songs. It's up to that point the band's best-written album and altogether a great rock record. When compared to its phenomenally selling predecessor Slippery When Wet, New Jersey is a much better album. It's much more complete record than Slippery, it has generally better lyrics and musicianship, better structure, and it has, mainly, better songs.

The tracklisting of New Jersey is solid and pretty much flawless. Besides the best song, powerful and memorable Blood On Blood, the album has some fantastic old-school rock'n'roll in Lay Your Hands On Me, Bad Medicine and 99 In The Shade. The big and bombastic rock ballad I'll Be There For You is great, as is for example the neatly written Living In Sin too. The two acoustic songs Love For Sale and Ride Cowboy Ride are nice - and it's great that there indeed are two acoustic songs on the album. The more mediocre songs of this album such as Born To Be My Baby and Stick To Your Guns are very good quality and better than the mediocre songs on practically all other Bon Jovi albums. The standard quality of the album is high and there are very few - if any at all - actually weak songs.

Lyrically New Jersey is better than the three albums before it. There's evident progress from the lyrics of Slippery When Wet, and although a lot of the lyrics aren't about much and big part of the lyrics concentrate around the cushy themes of love and friendship (and there are the cowboy songs too) and the quality of the lyrics would get significantly greater in the 1990s, there's no mistaking that the album wouldn't be well written.

One really great thing about New Jersey is how well the album plays together. The songs fit very well with each other which is a great thing, and a thing that neither Slippery When Wet nor Keep The Faith could accomplish. The album isn't just a bunch of singles or individual songs, but it has different, various types of songs and they all fit very well in exactly that order, together forming a good and well-working entity.

What comes to its flaws, there's few to find, save for the obvious layer of slight but unquestionable commercialism. Perhaps some songs aren't really mature or lyrically as good as the songs were to be in the 1990s, but those are only minor imperfections considering the high overall quality. However, it is a bit sad that there are additional writers contributing in the writing of five songs in total. Unfortunately it's a bit sad record, and in fact the worst of all credible Bon Jovi albums. Jon and Richie are no Lennon & McCartney, or even Jagger & Richards, but perhaps they should have had more confidence in their own writing and kept the pen in their own hands a little more.

But anyway, New Jersey is great. It's the best pure 100% rock album the band ever did, and perhaps one of the best rock records I have heard. Compared to other music, in my opinion New Jersey holds up relatively well. It's by no means a masterpiece, but it's this great, melodic and fun rock'n'roll, and as such, matched by few other rock albums of the same kind. I would say that it would be among some ten or so of the best rock albums of the 1980s. But more importantly - as there is very little point in comparing Bon Jovi music to other music - it is the second-best Bon Jovi album. And that's something.


OVERALL SCORE: 18 OUT OF 20