Richie is the real Genuis
 

Hey guys just wanted to say that i am a die hard jovi fan but after listening to richie solo albums it is now clear to me who is the real brains of the band. His albums are so soulful and meaningful which is what attractided me to jovi music in the first place, fair play to richie who's albums were far out sold by jons but are far superiour musically to jons albums dont know if any1 agrees but gimmie ur thoughts

KTF
relz

I don't think there's enough material that Richie has written alone to compare his songwriting skills to Jon's. With Jon we have the bulk of his solo CDs, half of the Keep the Faith CD, and songs from each band CD that he wrote solo. With Richie, there are three songs in the entire catalogue that he wrote solo. So, I don' t believe there's enough of a sample to compare the two as songwriters. Who knows how much of Richie's solo CDs are the contribution of Dave Bryan or Richie Supa or Desmond Child etc.

Now if you want to compare Jon and Richie as a team to another team of songwriters, there are plenty of songs to judge them by. If you want to compare Jon to another solo songwriter, there's enough material to do so. But it's impossible to judge Richie as a songwriter because there isn't enough released material he wrote alone.

Becky

Everything Jon or Rich has written on their own is mediocre or worse, they need each other (and various number of outside help) to produce anything good.

To each his own opinion I suppose, but I find it hard to imagine someone describing, for example, Dry County or Santa Fe as 'mediocre or worse'

Aloha !

True, but when it comes to co-writing Richie is the better one in my opinion. Also, writing songs isn't the only one you can compare them to. Picking a band, doing solo shows is something Richie is doing much better than Jon as well. Jon's band "The Big Dogs" just sucked, and his solo shows weren't that good either.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Yep, i agree.
If Richie were the real genius and the real musical influence on the band then all of their albums would sound like his solo work, but they don't.

Jon has said plenty of times before that part of what made the band was that they all had different musical influences and they put these into the band. You can tell that Richie has had input into the band but it is not all his own work.

True! I was pretty bored at Jon's solo show in 1998. There was no chemistry - it was just Jon with a band...
Richie's backing abnd seemed to have so much fun and it was as if they had played together for ages!
I know, this has nothing to do with writing song...

or Living in Sin! Has one of my fave lines of all times:

"You can talk but still say nothing
You stay together but alone"

Excellent! (IMO) :D

I disagree with you here... I think they are both really good songwriters and have great chemistry together. Jon has written some great songs on his own. I Believe, Bed of Roses, Fear, Dry County, Blaze of Glory, Santa Fe for example. Richie hasn't written enough on his own to be judged as a solo songwriter but his influence to the Jovi songs he has cowritten is noticible. I think the more outside input that comes into this partenship when writing Jovi songs, (with the exception of Desmond Child and in some cases Billy Falcon) the weaker their material is.

They both contribute in their own way to this band. I think it's unfair to say 'Richie is the genius' when as already mentioned, he did have a fair amount of help with the writing of both his solo albums. Jon's Blaze of Glory may be arguably not as good as Stranger, but you can't really use this as an argument as to why Richie is the better songwriter.

Blaze was a soundtrack written from the perspective of a character (Billy the Kid). He did it completely on his own with no Desmond Child or Dave around to help him make every song a hit.

Their chemistry is part of what makes Jovi great. While I'm sure they are capable on their own, I'm sure its not Richie doing all the work as some people seem to believe. It's their combined talents that have created many of these songs that they are famous for.