Revisiting Lost Highway

By the way, you can find almost all Bon Jovi audio CDs on AMAZON.IN with next day delivery! The prices are the same [for most] as they were back in the day when physical copies were a thing. Some are obviously priced about 8-10 times the usual price, but I'm sure you can get deliveries from ebay.com for the usual price or at a slight premium.

I will take a look, thanks.

I don't know if this topic was rehashed already (my apologies if it did), but did anyone take a listen of LH album divided by two different producing/mixing teams?

Songs produced by Dan Huff, with engineers Justin Niebank and Mark Hagen:

1. (You Want to) Make a Memory
2. We Got It Going On
3. Any Other Day
4. Seat Next to You
5. Till We Ain't Strangers Anymore
6. I Love This Town

Songs produced by Shanks, engineered by Jeff Rothschild:

1. Lost Highway
2. Summertime
3. Whole Lot of Leavin
4. Everybody's Broken
5. The Last Night
6. One Step Closer

Of these, Shanks also co-wrote LH, Summertime WLOL, The Last Night, One Step Closer.

What do you think about difference in production, honestly?
I don't mean quality of songs, there are good and horrendous songs IMO in both groups.

I feel that first group of songs breaths much more. It's always easy listening to Make a Memory and Seat Next To You in particular.

On the other hand, I like WLOL and Everybody's broken as compositions, but I feel they are heavily saturated with very little dynamics. Especially Everybody's Broken, Last Night and One Step Closer is like HAND heavy compressed production of "loudness wars"

EDIT: Walk Like a Man is a really great song. As are some others left of other albums, like Nothing from HAND. I've tried to rationalize why some songs are left of albums and some are not promoted to singles. Probably misjudgement, but sometimes I think perhaps if Jon is of opinion that he "borrowed" too much from reference track that was inspiration. Like Novocaine with My Chemical Romance? But then again, why put it even on album. Was Walk Like a Man similar to anything, did anyone find?

I don't hear much difference between the songs. Much like the two sets of songs on HAND. Does the person that does the final mix not have a major influence in ensuring a consistent sound across the songs?

Much no, I agree. And it should as you say, final mix is beyond the producer, its' basically done with mixing and mastering engineers, who are more probably than not following fads of the day, but know their craft.

However, there is a paragraph on Wikipedia (no source though), that says:

"After album was recorded, Jon wasn't satisfied with the mix of the album because it didn't have dynamics and range so he decided it needed to be re-mixed."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_H...Bon_Jovi_album)

I do hear it, but more pronounced on those two ballads. Ballad thing could perhaps explain it. Both vocals breath more (ballad thing perhaps), but also guitars (guitars on Everybody's Broken, Last NIght, One Step Closer are like background noise). Still, I do think this loudness compressed approach did work on HAND (in a sense that album wouldn't be necessarily better if it breathes more, it's solid in that pop punk wannabe teen cool, with whatever shortcomings that approach has, but I "get" production choices there).

However, LH and 2020 are two only really solid production wise albums of Jovi since 2005. WAN is worst, it's a nightmare mix of not-optimal takes, wrong production choices and new digital gimmicks, that were just becoming good in those years (and much worse than today. Today you can record all drums in midi and it sounds better than 70% of live recorded, for example).