I first heard the album in late 2001, about a year before I joined this site and I loved it then, so I don’t think this place has influenced my opinion of this album. I didn’t have any Bon Jovi fans in my group of friends at the time (I hardly ever have done) so I went into this band all on my own with no outside influence. The only opinions I read from others would have been Amazon reviews. That being said, when I joined here back in 2002 I was quite floored by how many threads of appreciation for this album. Personally I was also fascinated by it being the last album they did before Crush and wondering what happened in the intervening years.

I get why some people don’t care for it or think it’s just an ok album for the aforementioned reasons (depressing, lacking more rock songs, not being as optimistic and in-your-face like earlier albums, etc.) and that’s fine. There even are times when I’ve felt underwhelmed while listening to it despite being one of my favourite albums of all time.

There are many reasons why it’s held in such high esteem here but I think one of the main reasons is the band haven’t really levelled up to the album since.

Also, I’ve never really cared for the b-sides from this era. They’re mostly boring.