Improving Have A Nice Day and Lost Highway
 

6 A.M. in the morning here in Argentina and I can't sleep, I gotta go to college in about two hours to go to my criminal law class (yay!). When I can't sleep I start to think in a lot of things: what I've done in my day, how I ****ed up things in life and how Have A Nice Day could've been a great record.

We all here know the story of how Have A Nice Day was going to be a great album and the evil singer Jon* took out one of the best songs he wrote in the last decade: Nothing. Damn it, evil Jon. The album we had was good, but could have been better. Jon felt he had the need to take songs that were "similar" and add some others, as a phoenician curse could fall uppon him if he doesn't put 12 tracks on the albums he releases.

When I decided to do this, I wanted to do it for myself, to find a way to enjoy more this album that is one of my favourites of the post-2000 era (after Bounce and Lost Highway). I don't know about you guys, but I can't enjoy a shitty quality song, that's why I decided to left our beloved Nothing behind. Maybe the next year when the band releases a 30th Anniversary Boxset, I can make this again, but until now, I gotta work with what I have.

The first thing to do was decided what kind of record I wanted, and I wanted an homogeneous (pop) Rock 'N Roll record. Then, I needed to clean this up. The original setlist for Have A Nice Day is:

1. Have A Nice Day
2. I Want To Be Loved
3. Welcome To Wherever You Are
4. Who Says You Can't Go Home
5. Last Man Standing
6. Bells Of Freedom
7. Wildflower
8. Last Cigarette
9. I Am
10. Complicated
11. Novocaine
12. Story Of My Life

I decided that Wildflower got to go, I like this song a lot (yeah, hit me), it's a nice piece of work, but sadly I don't think that fits here. Another easy go was Last Cigarette, reason: I can't stand it. Then came the hard part: does Who Says You Can't Go Home got to go? I decided yes, and my reason was that the song could be on Sugarland's album anyway, could be a single anyway and it could be a well-known song on the USA anyway. If they feel the need to add it to "own" it, it could be a Bonus Track here, or better, in Lost Highway. Maroon 5 did with Moves Like Jagger and it seemed to work for them. Novocaine was another hard one, I decided that sadly, it had to go.

So we have:

1. Have A Nice Day
2. I Want To Be Loved
3. Welcome To Wherever You Are
4. Last Man Standing
5. Bells Of Freedom
6. I Am
7. Complicated
8. Story Of My Life

Then obviously I needed to add the 3 great Bonus Tracks. Another thing I did was swapping Welcome To Wherever You Are for the Jeremy Wheatley Mix of the same song, as I like it more.

1. Have A Nice Day
2. I Want To Be Loved
3. Welcome To Wherever You Are (Jeremy Wheatley Mix)
4. Who Says You Can't Go Home
5. Last Man Standing
6. Bells Of Freedom
7. I Am
8. Complicated
9. Story Of My Life
10. Dirty Little Secret
11. Unbreakable
12. These Open Arms

It took me a good while to find a good order for those songs. I finally decided to stick with this one, based on the original order of the original 2004 Have A Nice Day:

1. Have A Nice Day
2. I Want To Be Loved
3. Welcome To Wherever You Are (Jeremy Wheatley Mix)
4. Complicated
5. Bells Of Freedom
6. Dirty Little Secret
7. Unbreakable
8. I Am
9. These Open Arms
10. Last Man Standing
11. Story Of My Life

I think that the order of the songs works way better this way.

So, that's pretty much it, it leaves us with 4 deleted songs, 3 added songs and 1 change of mix. It leaves us with 11 songs. Maybe someday we'll be able to put the original Have A Nice Day with the acoustic part in the middle and nothing, but at the moment, is not possible.

tl;dr: They should have left the album the way it was and stop ****ing around.

Now, the hardest part to me: Lost Highway. I consider Lost Highway one of the best albums this band had made, and I don't mean "best post-2000", I mean best albums ever. This album has soul, this album sounds like a band, this album is full of meaning. What I do is listen the whole album 12 + 2 Bonus Tracks + Hallelujah + Wanted Dead Or Alive and Who Says You Can't Go Home stripped. But that's long, like, really long, so I decided to make it shorter and "better".

Here's the original Lost Highway:

1. Lost Highway
2. Summertime
3. (You Want To) Make A Memory
4. Whole Lot Of Leavin'
5. We Got It Going On
6. Any Other Day
7. Seat Next To You
8. Everybody's Broken
9. 'Till We Ain't Strangers Anymore
10. The Last Night
11. One Step Closer
12. I Love This Town

The first thing I had to do was delete some songs, as the two bonus tracks needed to get in. This was really dificult, I love them all... The first one that went away was the weaker: One Step Closer. The next follow-up was hard, as I think is a nice song, but Everybody's Broken had to go. Then, I deleted a song that I like, I Love This Town; yes, hit me, but is not that bad, I just don't like it at the end of the shows. I almost deleted Summertime, but I said "I might find a way in for this one". I did.

So now we have:

1. Lost Highway
2. Summertime
3. (You Want To) Make A Memory
4. Whole Lot Of Leavin'
5. We Got It Going On
6. Any Other Day
7. Seat Next To You
8. 'Till We Ain't Strangers Anymore
9. The Last Night

Next thing I did was put the album back in cowboy. How? Replacing the "Album pop mixes" for the original single country-ish ones. Also, I added the two Bonus Tracks.

1. Lost Highway
2. Summertime
3. (You Want To) Make A Memory (Country Version)
4. Whole Lot Of Leavin'
5. We Got It Going On
6. Any Other Day
7. Seat Next To You
8. 'Till We Ain't Strangers Anymore (Version from LeAnn Rimes album "Family")
9. The Last Night
10. Lonely
11. Put The Boy Back In Cowboy

I struggled a lot in order to find a way this songs blend ok. I almost deleted Seat Next To You and Whole Lot Of Leavin'. I really, really, wanted to delete Whole Lot Of Leavin', but is a meaningful song for Jon and Richie blah, blah, needed to stay. Finally, I came up with this one:

1. Lost Highway
2. Summertime
3. Whole Lot Of Leavin'
4. (You Want To) Make A Memory (Country Version)
5. Put The Boy Back In Cowboy
6. We Got It Going On
7. Any Other Day
8. Till We Ain't Stangers Anymore (Version from LeAnn Rimes album "Family")
9. The Last Night
10. Seat Next To You
11. Lonely

And if you want, as the 12th lucky bonus track: Who Says You Can't Go Home (Duet Version).

Here are the Spotify Playlists if you want them:

• Have A Nice Day: http://open.spotify.com/user/ezearis...p7lbsGEprBtYVr
• Lost Highway: http://open.spotify.com/user/ezearis...688ZZNgcAw2Wad
• Lost Higway (With Who Says You Can't Go Home as a Bonus Track): http://open.spotify.com/user/ezearis...emgtJscs4ExtI4

Also, if you want a revisited version of The Circle, Wrath Mania made one that I like a lot. This is the original thread, and here I made a Spotify playlist of it.

Bye guys, I need to shower. I think I'm running late for my class.

*Evil Jon is really evil, at least this --> :evilbat: evil. If he wasn't evil he wouldn't have deleted Nothing.

Edit: I totally forgot about Walk Like A Man, as jovifan93 says, so I've added it after The Last Night.

Edit 2: Sorry, but though I love Walk Like A Man, I can't find a place in the album for it, it kills the mood. I think I'm deleting it again :(

Not bad, but you obviously forgot the one best bonus track for both of the albums: "Nothing" for HAND and "Walk Like A Man" for LH. Please work 'em in ;-)

DUDE I KNEW I WAS FORGETTING SOMETHING IN LOST HIGHWAY! About Nothing, I explained on the post why I didn't added it. I'll add Walk Like a Man in a while.

Oops, I missed that part, sorry - yeah, there's no great quality recording of it to be found anywhere I'm afraid - I have one that's pretty decent to good, but there's still noise in the chorus (from the guitars mixing with the cymbals I guess) - but it's pretty listenable...

Loving Walk Like A Man though - one of the best songs BJ have ever done, great melody, great lyrics, deeper meaning, just great! :-)

Agree, but at 6 AM in the morning with no sleep I totally forgot about it! I added it after Strangers.

No problem mate ;-)

I definitely think that would make the albums better.

Nothing is one of the best songs after '95 to me, selling it to another band was a crime in my opinion.

Cannot believe this TBH. Tastes are different I know but this album ended my BJ fanship in the first place. I have never heard such a dull, lame, constructed, soulless, shitty, crappy album in my whole life. This album is the worst piece of shit a major band has ever released. Followed closely by WAN. Songs like "Last Night", "STranger", "Memory", "WGOGO", Seat Next To You are the most embarrassing crap Jon ever came up with. Not to forget the HORRENDOUS ILTT.
This album does NOT sound like a band, Songs like Summertime WGIGO and the other shit songs on this piece of garbage have no depth or meaning at all if you ask me. With this record BJ became trend chasers and went the housewife easy listening route.
The only "good" song is Any other day - I would rate the album 1 out of 10. WAN i gave 3/10.
This album defines this now souless band the best. Worst album EVER (And I do not mean only BJ albums!)

You might not like the country tunes, as a lot of people, but there's a great difference from saying "i don't like them" to say "they are meaningless". About feeling, I find Lost Highway one with most of them, even the weaker songs like Everybody's Broken have a message and nice lyrics.

To me, the only song that are meaningless are Summertime and We Got It Going On, but because that's what they're supposed to be, the first one is a pop single-ish song and the other is a "have fun" one.

I find Till We Ain't Strangers Anymore one of the best post-2000 ballads, this is the most close to a power ballad we are going to get of this band, and I like it, not only the melody but the lyrics. Seat Next To You is a nice song, and Memory, to me, it's a masterpiece with real feelings.

When I listen to Lost Highway is like I can feel the lonelyness, the love and the wilingness to move forward and get on with your life. There aren't too many records that have done that for me, that's why I think it's really full of meaning.

I'm surprised that you find WAN better than LH, as I think this new record is the weakest they've put out. But hey, everyone has different tastes, it's all right :p

Agree, Nothing was a masterpiece. Another one I can't believe they sold out and didn't added was These Open Arms. Jon is crazy, let's remember he almost sold Prayer.