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#42
04-29-2016, 12:25 AM
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#43
04-29-2016, 09:32 AM
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__________________
Phil 
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#44
04-29-2016, 09:57 AM
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#45
04-29-2016, 11:58 PM
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Excellent post! I was thinking of something very similar (mine was going to be "Things everybody loves but you just don't get")
This is going to be a very long list. Let's start with all the things I love and don't give a damn about what other people think, in chronological order (kinda): - Fahrenheit is amazing. I only skip one song. 80s hard rock BJ-style at its best. I know it’s too similar to many other bands from that era and that style but the guitars are pure awesomeness. I even like "King of The Mountain" and "Always Run To You" The first album is quite good too, an album with the best cuts from both would have been the bomb. I listen to them more than to Slippery. - Love their concert videoclips. Don't seem cliché, cheap or lazy to me, that's what they do best. They are not actors or models. When they try to get all artsy and cinematographic they fail miserably. I hate with a passion when they try to be trendy like with "I Believe" or "Hey God", two awesome songs with lame videos. - My fav power ballad from the 80s is "Silent Night". I’d have a hard time choosing another one, "Wild is The Wind" is pretty good but tries too hard to be THE power ballad. The classic 80s ballads do nothing for me (although "I'll Be There For You" was awesome live back then) - Love 80s guitars, LOVE LOVE LOVE'EM  - My fav from Slippery is "Wild in The Streets", also a fav live. Then "I'd Die For You" and YGLABN. Prayer is a good karaoke song and Wanted has a killer intro but I'm not crazy about the songs in general. But I like to sing Prayer at the top of my lungs (who doesn't lol) and pretend I'm in the videoclip. - NJ is their perfect album. Not my fav though - "Runaway" is the song I associate with BJ. Maybe because I was impressed/scared with the video as a kid. My fav from their 80s hits is YGLABN - TAALS is miles better than "Always" (nice, but a little bit cheesy, although it made me a real fan) and BOR (some really pretentious lyrics, can’t decide most of the time if it’s awesome or plain silly). It’s my fav BJ love song. "Stay" would have been a serious contender if released properly. My fav “slow” song would be "Miss 4th Of July". For whatever reason, it touches me like no other song. - Jon looks VEEEEEEEEERY hot in the "Always" video. That’s the only reason I like it, it has a pretty silly storyline. Their terrible first videos are a guilty pleasure too. Lots of man candy. - I love TD not because the perfect balance between lyrics and music, but because I feel the songs come from a sincere, genuine place. Probably not, but don’t burst my bubble lol. My fav from TD is "Bitter Wine" even though it’s not even a top10 of mine. Strangely enough, I think it’s the song that describes how I feel about the album, the beauty, melancholy of it, rawness of the feelings, the optimism trough the pain. Speaking of pain, I prefer the acoustic SFTP, the electric was lame and never worked live, don't like the album version either. The thing with TD songs is that I don’t think they have particularly deep lyrics or methapors and that's a good thing because I’m not really into songs that pretend to be poetry, but at the same time I think Jon has a way of writing normal/cliché lyrics but giving them a power, a beauty, a scenery, a FEELING. And that's what makes this album stand out from the rest. - Based on the songs that were supposed for the Sex Sells solo project, I’d have love it to bits. Not so much when it turned into a band project. I much prefer Crush - Speaking of Crush, I liked it since the beginning (bar IML). Same with Bounce. I love "I Got the Girl", always brings a smile to my face. Capt. Crash, OWN, "Save The World", "Bounce" the track, RSOW, "Joey" is a cute 'lil song, "Open All Night" is a solid ballad, one of the few good post 2000 ballads they have (that and MAM really). "Everyday" is the only IML clone I like. More than the original, which I can’t stand. I like the b-sides from both albums but they don’t fit the mood/style. Except for "Neurotica" they all sound like JBJ songs. I feel we didn’t get a great solo 3rd album with all that superb material and Jon ran out of ideas. It's a shame all the tracks he wrote that got "lost" between the boxset and the Crush and Bounce b-sides. - I hated WFTWM and didn’t give TC a chance until a couple years later. I like "Live Before You Die" and don’t get why so many people love "Learn to Love". Terrible boring ballad that goes nowhere, cringeworthy lyrics, clearly precursor of WAN-type songs. I love LOTR because that’s what they do best, upbeat cliché-laden uptempo songs and THEY WORK EVERYTIME because they perform them very convincingly both live and in the studio. Shame that Jon seems to think he's above that type of songs at this stage of his career. What a fool he is. - I liked BWC a lot when it was first released. Same with the title trak (except the chorus which I hated then and I hate now). I kinda liked the album on first listen. I don’t know why it fell apart the second time and never listened to it again (I lied, I know why: it's very bad). If a song pops up randomly I don't feel the urge to give it a try at all, always skip. "I’m With You" is weak and overproduced, the ballads are ten times worse than the worst ballads from Bounce, HAND and LH combined (though "Thick as Thieves" had potential, if it had been recorded 10 years ago), "Room at The End of the World" is a zillion times worse than "Learn to Love", Jon at its worse. Terrible terrible terrible lyrics. But not as terrible as "Amen". Probably the song I hate the most in their entire catalog. Oh, and the acoustic songs put me to sleep, Jon voice is absolutely wrong for that style. And finally the bonus tracks are embarrasing bad, especially the Coldplay-esque one (“I’m gonna kick your ass” how old are you Jon?). I think these and "Take Back the Night" are the type of songs that should NEVER leave Jon’s head. There's trying different thing and there's being ridiculous. - But I love "The Fighter" even if I’ve listened to it maybe 5 times total. I want to hate it because it’s screaming crafted and it's doesn't seem so different from that desperate take-me-seriously-look-how-poetic-I-write-and-how-many-big-words-I-know otherwise known as "Amen", but there's something about that song and the same happens with "Blind Love", they bring me back to a time when Jon used to write those touching deep lyrics that didn't reek pretentiousness, they just touched you. That made you close your eyes and listen to his voice and the lyrics. Shame his voice can’t sell them anymore. - I LOVE "No Apologies" and TILTIL. Unashamedly - Loved the banter onstage though I suspected it was fake/heavily scripted since watching AAA many years ago And a final confession: My no1 song was always "Dry County", since the first time I heard it. But lately TD has struck a chord with me, I don’t know why. Everytime I listen to it, I stop and really listen, the melody, the lyrics, they speak to me in a way DC doesn't. And STBIN has creeped into the 2nd spot. Now DC is 3rd and the ones below are coming hard for that coveted spot. I hope I don't get my membership card revoked here  Edit. Just heard Prayer on the radio, while I was editing the post. And I sung my lungs off while fist pumping of course 
__________________
These days what's left of me ain't no Prince Charming We know Jon, we know Last edited by symbeline; 04-30-2016 at 12:28 AM..
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#46
04-30-2016, 01:10 AM
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#47
04-30-2016, 01:18 AM
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And now for the things I don't get/leave my scratching my head:
- The boxset is what it is, a collection of demos/songs that were not good enough to make an album or didn't fit said album for whatever reason. There are many great and some really AWESOME songs, but contrary to popular opinion, I’d say Jon made the right choices except for a couple exceptions. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the boxset, I’m extremely happy we got it, but no matter how much I’d like to see “Woman in Love” and “Little Bit of Soul” out of KTF or get rid of Sleep or Blame it (pick your choice), the songs from the boxset don’t *gel* with the final album. And two of those songs are in my top10 and I love them to death (Radio and "Miss 4th of July"), but they belong to a moment in time, not to an album. Same with TD, I wouldn’t change anything, well maybe "Wedding Day" for one of the *weakest* (SFTP; "Hearts Breaking Even" or even one of my faves "If That’s What it Takes"), but none from the boxset. Only a couple songs I see instead of the final choices, the clear candidate is "We Rule The Night", an awesome track that should have made Fahrenheit instead of "(I Don’t Wanna Fall) Into the Fire". The other one woud be Edge, but I don’t think it’s as good as almost everybody does. To me it doesn't fit Slippery entirely, it has some Fahrenheit elements that probably made them discard it. It's still miles better than "Social Disease" though. - Same happens with the "Sons of Beaches" demos. I like most, but NJ is absolute perfection. I wouldn’t change or add anything. They made the right call with this one - I don't care for most of the 80s-early 90s classics (Prayer, Wanted, IBT4Y, NSG, KTF, BOR..). It could be I'm sick of hearing them. Didn't make me a fan when they were on heavy rotation on the radio, tv, magazines, etc. When I re-discovered them I leaned towards their rawer sound/album cuts. I'm pedantic like that  But most of their hits work(ed) perfect live and that's how I like them.- I think I’ve listened to HAND 3-4 times total. I like Who Says and "Story Of My Life" but I don't feel the urge to listen to them. LMS is too contrived and unsincere. "Novocaine" is ok but not a masterpiece. "Nothing" and Postcards are awesome but rest of b-sides/bonus tracks are just ok. To me, HAND is weaker and poppier than Bounce so I don't see why so many people say it rocks harder or has better lyrics. It's their first clearly overproduced album and it sounds very dated now. - Never understood the fixation this board has for "Mystery Train". It’s slow, dragging, goes nowhere, If I had to choose, I prefer "She's a Mystery" or "Wildflower" (ducks to avoid flying tomatoes) even though I don't care for them at all. - I never understood the hype about The Distance until I saw it live. I still don’t care for the album version. Same with "Undivided". Two very overrated songs, probably the most post 2000. - I thought LH was very good and gave it lots of play in the year after its release. Now I’ve haven't heard it for ages and I only like MAM and WLOL. Never got the love for AOD, a mediocre middle-of-the-road track. Absolutely and instantly forgetable. But the title for the most overrated song of that era goes to"Walk like a Man". Another bland song full of cringeworthy clichés. The lyrics are trying very hard to be touching, real, but they fail. - Other very overrated songs: Garageland, Fields of Fire, The End, The Fire Inside (I'm sure there are many more, those are the ones I can remember at the moment) - I hate "Real Life" with a passion. The first time ever I hated a BJ song. The video was awful (except for the awesome Dave cardboard cutout). I hoped it was a one-time only type of song but they never went back to how things were before. To me it's where everything changed. And finally, it pains me to say this, but I used to think Jon was an underrated writer, but now I’m kinda siding with those who think he’s just OK and can’t write anything more than clichés. He always says that writing happy uplifting songs is harder than downers and he’s been failing hard to do it for the past 10 years. It sure fuels the speculation about how much doctoring his old hits had. Don’t kill the messenger, I KNOW Jon can write an he’s proven it time and again, but his muse has been MIA since Crush and a couple of good songs over a period of 15 years is not good enough. Not remotedly close. I hate his singer-songwriter persona. He used to be a good lyricist, with a tiny bit of a pedantic touch here and there but kept it pretty well balanced overall. Now we get "Amen" instead of "Every Word Was a Piece of My Heart". I'm sure it started before, but it went downhill fast after Jon covered "Hallelujah". His take on the song is basically acting and it looks fake as hell. It doesn’t suit his voice (his tone), those *high* notes at the end sound strained and they aren’t even high!, he’s clearly and desperately trying to sell his serious singer-songwriter side and since he got so much praise for it, he's been pimping it out and thinking that critics and fans will take him more seriously if he recycles his style. Which would be a damn shame, he's fooling himself if he thinks he has the voice or the natural talent for it. He doesn't. His first solo album was awesome because you could hear Jon style all over a foreign material (a script as an inspiration, I mean, not an original idea). He made it his. It wasn't Jon pretending to be a anybody. Same with the second album. It was a different style, but there's still lots of Jon in there. His third solo album (WAN in case anybody was wondering) is fake, contrived, overthought, crafted to the max. If his idea of being respected as a songwriter is losing his own identity and tackling more serious themes to sound more mature and fit into the mold critics like, then there's little hope to get the old Jon back
__________________
These days what's left of me ain't no Prince Charming We know Jon, we know Last edited by symbeline; 04-30-2016 at 01:41 AM..
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#48
04-30-2016, 07:37 AM
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