BON JOVI – These Days

Bon Jovi – These Days (1995, Mercury Records)

Track Listing:
1. “Hey God” (6:20)
2. “Something for the Pain” (4:46)
3. “This Ain’t a Love Song” (5:06)
4. “These Days” (6:26)
5. “Lie to Me” (5:33)
6. “Damned” (4:27)
7. “My Guitar Lies Bleeding in My Arms” (5:42)
8. “(It’s Hard) Letting You Go” (5:50)
9. “Hearts Breaking Even” (5:05)
10. “Something to Believe In” (5:25)
11. “If That’s What It Takes” (5:27)
12. “Diamond Ring” (3:46)

Band:
Jon Bon Jovi – Vocals
Richie Sambora – Guitar
Tico Torres – Drums
David Bryan – Keyboards

Producer:
Peter Collins

If 1992′s Keep the Faith started to show the band’s desire to *not* rock, this album all but confirmed it. These Days is Bon Jovi’s attempt to shed the “80s rockers” label and get serious. It’s not as fun as the Bon Jovi that the world was used to up to that point. It’s a little darker and a little jaded and a little angry.

From the opening moments of the album with the almost-alternative rocker “Hey God” you can easily tell this is not the Bon Jovi of days gone by that sung about riding steel horses or the temperature being 99 in the shade. When I first heard this album, I absolutely hated it. A friend of mine played this album for me and I remember that we kept playing “Hey God” over and over again, laughing at how bad it was and how much this whole album was NOT *our* Bon Jovi.

Well, that was probably about ’97 or so that I first heard it, and since then, These Days has grown on me and has become one of my favorite albums from the band. Once I had a copy of my own, I listened to it a lot. I remember many late nights playing this album nonstop after I had moved down to Florida when I was in my late teens, totally getting into the melancholy nature of the songs. There are a few albums in my collection that really represent a period in my life, they represent what I was going through emotionally at the time, and this is one of them. And for that reason, it’s almost like a time warp listening to this now. It’s also for that reason that I tend not to listen to this album much. It’s amazing how many feelings from a certain point in your life that you can associate with a song or whole album and not being able to disconnect the two.

If you want Bon Jovi singing big rock anthems with huge choruses, this is not the album for you. Heck, as I said previously, they don’t even rock out much here as there’s only a few songs that really open fire (“Hey God”, “Something for the Pain”, “These Days”, “Damned”). The rest are pretty low-key, slow to mid-tempo numbers. If you can get past the fact that you aren’t going to get a sequel Slippery When Wet or New Jersey, this is a darn good album and one of their betters ones, in my opinion.

This album also marks “unofficial” band member Hugh McDonald’s first full studio album appearance on bass. As of the time of this writing, he’s *still* not a recognized member of the band, despite playing bass on their albums and tours since 1994. There’s also a few B-sides floating around from this album that didn’t make the cut and mostly wound up in special international editions of the album and that’s a shame for the U.S. because it’s really good stuff.

Highlights: “Hey God”, “These Days”, “Lie to Me”, “(It’s Hard) Letting You Go”, “Hearts Breaking Even”, “Something To Believe In”, “If That’s What It Takes”

Lowlights: “Diamond Ring”. Some things never changed, I’ve always disliked this song and I still do.