One Light Burning....

Of course it's not true... There was just no demand for it.. Blaze Of Glory the album only sold two million copies which is not a huge success for a band like Bon Jovi back then...

I lived through the time... There was a certain element that people were looking for and Stranger just didn't have it... Richie promoted the shit out of it and there was enough flavor of it out there to take off... It didn't take much back then either...There was no line at the door waiting for its release...

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Well, Stranger trascends time and space, it's something that once found, becomes a much treasured gem. Richie's other solo projects were good but man, Stranger is something you can do once in a lifetime, out of this world! There aren't many albums I can listen from the very beginning till the very end (New Jersey also belongs to that category<3). And I've read countless accounts of people who are IN LOVE with this album. Commercial success does nothing for me, it needs to be personal and believe me, there are enough Stranger fans out there. And the rumour...I don't and won't believe that Jon has anything to do with Richie's moderately low success as a solo artist. He himself is far more successful being a part of the band and yeah, this is where they belong. You can't force anybody if that person lost their heart to it, though. I wish Richie and the guys nothing but success and happiness.

It just wasn't commercial enough for pop radio, I really believe that and Richie agrees with that. I don't think anything nefarious went down, his name just wasn't well known enough to make a bluesy album commercially successful.

Richie himself has said it was not commercial enough and that if he had it to do over, he would not have made it as bluesy. An interview he did during KYF promo has that in it and it's posted in a thread I made to post various articles in. The idea that Jon or anyone else sabatoged him is ludicrous. He promoted the album quite a bit and toured for it (on his own dime). The demand just wasn't there.

But, on the subject of the thread, One Light Burning is definitely his best song.

Agreed, Richie also stated that in Behind The Music: "...maybe, in hindsight, I should've been more radio-minded. I totally was throwing down from a soulful, artistic place!"

And Richie didn't tour that much because the interest outside of the US was too low at that point (quite the opposite of later on). There had been shows announced to be held in Germany back in December of 1991, but they were (for that time) richly priced (almost the level of Jovi tickets in that era) and didn't sell well at all. I've heard rumours that possible UK dates had been selling decently, but the costs probably would've been too high for one or two UK dates only.

The bluesiness of Richie's solo stuff is incredibly overstated on these forums. Also, Gary Moore's Still Got the Blues was a HUGE hit just around that time. It certainly wasn't just due to it being bluesy.

That being said... it's not very poppy indeed, but it is a great album just the same.

I wounder what it would have sounded like if Jon actually did produce it as planned...

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It is a great album and it's bluesy-ness is not the only reason it failed commercially, no, but it wasn't in tune with what was "in" at that time. Looking into it, Gary Moore's album reached 83 on the Billboard 200 and didn't go Gold until 1995, whereas Stranger hit #36 so in the US. It actually did BETTER than Gary Moore's album so I'm not sure how much of a hit that was around these parts. We could be talking about two different points of the world so it's a fruitless debate.

Here's how "Stranger" charted on Billboard 200:

September 21, 1991 - 36
September 28, 1991 - 50
October 5, 1991 - 55
October 12, 1991 - 63
October 19, 1991 - 73
October 26, 1991 - 89
November 2, 1991 - 89
November 9, 1991 - 101
November 16, 1991 - 135
November 23, 1991 - 157
November 30, 1991 - 187

It isnt bad at all, is it?

I know that Stranger peaked at No. 20 in the UK album charts.