Jon's always had a knack for catchy melodies and that's the one thing I think he's really kept. But at their height, a combination of melody, lyrics and musicianship made Bon Jovi songs stand out from the sea of rock and pop.
Nowadays:
- The lyrics have very much resorted to the moon, june, spoon rhyme scheme that Jon used to mock himself like 20 years ago. Sure, there's never been the poetical lyric resort like you'd get it with Dylan, Springsteen or Isakov. But the lyrics, even though there had always been a cheesy side to them, rang true and spoke to fans. Nowadays, they've become way too repretitive and predictable for most parts. I remember back when The Fighter was played, Seb saying that for every decent line these days you'd get one cringeworthy one as well. Even Unbroken which had been hailed as lyrical masterpieces at some places, essentially is Jon reciting some statistics he'd probably been given for the documentary and interspersing the typcial cliché lines inbetween.
- The music had never been far on the experimental side, but even well after their prime, the tight musicianship between Richie, Dave, Tico and Hugh made standard tracks interesting and identifiable due to little things they all brought up with their talent. Nowadays, good melodies are wrapped in generic pop songs that, for the most part, blend into one big blur when listening to them in a row.