Sayonara, adios, auf wiedersehen, farewell

Continuing my trip back through the 2015 album charts.

28/08/15 : Burning Bridges - Bon Jovi


This is my third visit with Bon Jovi - in '96, I suggested they were beyond their best and in '05 I expressed astonishment they were still going, but in both cases I graciously accepted that things weren't as bad as they could have been. But that doesn't mean my expectations are anything more than rock bottom for this.

Oh dear - they've definitely been reading their own promotional material because they're taken themselves very seriously here. It's mostly a combination of pompous and dull, often with the appearance of very little effort having going into it and the title track, which ends the album. is absolutely dreadful. One star - would not recommend.

We're at an amazing #3 with a new entry this week on the start of a not so amazing eight week run which pleasingly featured a drop every week. The rest of the top five were Jess Glynne (a new entry), Cilla Black (a best-of explained by her death earlier in the year), Bars & Melody (a new entry from two teenage rappers from Britain's Got Talent who are, somewhat surprisingly, still giving it a go out there) and Dr Dre. Well, that's quite the mix in there, isn't it - and we have one more new entry in the top ten for Disturbed (#8).

Wikipedia tells us that this was their thirteenth album and consisted of a variety of new and previously unreleased and unfinished songs - basically their contract negotiations with Mercury had broken down and this was bunged out to fulfil their obligations, so I guess the album title was very appropriate. The critics liked it even less than I did - "sub-Springsteen working-class references, spiritually patriotic clichés and foursquare, bombastic riffs abound" and "offers little more than a fresh excuse to refill the coffers". It still got to #1 in Spain and Germany though - I imagine it dropped down pretty quickly though.

"Customers also listened to" Bryan Adams, Def Leppard, Meat Loaf and Guns N' Roses - all of whom have made nice enough noises over the years but there's a good argument they've all continued longer than they should have. As is definitely the case for Bon Jovi and this is a perfect example of that.

21/08/15 - Not bad at all
04/09/15 - Not as good as I remembered

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