Slippery When Wet – Bon Jovi

Producer: Bruce Fairbairn

Released: August 18, 1986

Rating: *** 1/2

For whatever reason, although I am not the world’s biggest Bon Jovi fan, I happen to own a lot of his/their albums. I often times find it difficult to get through an entire Bon Jovi album. Oddly, it’s Jon’s voice that tends to wear on me after a while. That being said, I did see Bon Jovi live on the Crush tour and his voice was much better (to me) live. The fact is, I am 36 years old and this was one of the albums that was impossible to NOT own when it was first released.

As much as artists don’t want to be most remembered for the work that initially made them famous, Slippery When Wet does contain what I would consider to be the three signature Bon Jovi tunes: You Give Love A Bad Name, Livin’ On A Prayer and Wanted Dead Or Alive. I dislike You Give Love A Bad Name nearly as much as I dislike Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again, and for the same reason. Radio played the hell out of these songs when they were first released and still do. I’ve had enough. Livin’ On A Prayer has probably received just as much airplay, yet I still love this song. It’s a very uplifting tune and not nearly as cheesy as You Give Love A Bad Name. Wanted Dead Or Alive is without a doubt my favorite Bon Jovi song and also my favorite “road” song of all time. This is such a cool song and is pure rock n’ roll. It tells the story of every road weary band that ever existed. Oddly when this album was recorded Bon Jovi probably hadn’t been around long enough or had nearly enough success to have “seen a million faces” or have “rocked them all”. Who cares? The line is timeless and the song is as well.

If you look at the writing credits for those three songs you can kind of figure out why I like Wanted Dead Or Alive the most. It’s the one that Jon and Richie wrote themselves without the help of hit maker Desmond Child. In my opinion, this album suffers from too much Desmond Child as well as 24 years later sounds extremely juvenile (New Jersey is my favorite overall Bon Jovi album). Let It Rock and Raise Your Hands are the two other songs that I actually like from Slippery When Wet (neither of which Desmond had anything to do with). For me, the rest of the songs on the album are somewhat forgettable and formulaic. What do I know? This album was #1 for 8 weeks. It’s the bands best selling album to date, selling 13.9 million albums in the States (28 million worldwide) and was the best selling album of 1987.

I am sure my 3 1/2 star rating may raise some eyebrows. For the most part, this album is what Bon Jovi is all about. The band writes and records ballads very well. I’m guessing that if you are a Bon Jovi fan you own and love this album. If you don’t own this album, but have heard and love the three singles, you should probably buy this album immediately. The three singles accurately represent what the listener is getting themselves into.