BON JOVI – Have A Nice Day

If you’re looking for a big surprise, please skip this review and Bon Jovi’s new album, entitled Have A Nice Day. But if you want to have a nice day, read on, or better; go out and invest your hard earned money and make the rich richer.

There are clear and obvious reasons why Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora are the richest survivors from the big hair days, and they prove it again with Have A Nice Day. They simply pen songs that are catchy and timeless, and they wrap it up in a way so anyone with a radio can listen to them. Ever since 1992’s Keep The Faith, when the band toned down its teenie image and started making music for an even wider audience, with no failed attempts to look to Seattle, Bon Jovi have kept doing what they do best, in a more mature way… and with their incredible songwriting skills and smart approach –- they never did something they could not do again, but instead built a musical platform to stand on for the rest of their lives –- they are still on top of their game.

Have A Nice Day is again, as you might have guessed, another damn fine collection of Melodic Rock songs; free of any unpleasant surprises. Bon Jovi’s crowd doesn’t like surprises anyway. However, Have A Nice Day seems slightly more “in your face” production-wise than the band’s latest efforts, and without scaring anyone’s mama off, it emphasizes that Richie Sambora still is the perfect combination between a guitar hero and a band player. Just give the title track and opener a spin; the song is as catchy as catchy gets.

“I Want To Be Loved” sees Sambora utilizing the “talking guitar” (it may very well have a name, and you musicians out there know it), like he has done several times now, most notable in the smashing hit “Living On A Prayer.”

…And so the nice day goes on; “Welcome To Wherever You Are,” with its nice sing-a-long chorus and background orchestration, the mid-tempo rocker “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” “Last Man Standing,” with a cool opening riff, and, needless to say, catchy chorus, the ballad “Bells Of Freedom” (not the highlight on a this nice day), and another ballad, “Wildflower,” also with orchestration.

It makes no sense to name every hour of the day… some of them are more enjoyable than others, and it seems like Bon Jovi pens better rockers than ballads these days. “I Am” deserves a mention, as well as “One Last Cigarette,” where Jon draws similarities between a girl and a last cigarette –- something the clean living audience will never understand …

To sum it up; no surprises, not Bon Jovi’s nicest day (but that says more about their past days than this, because it IS a nice day), but more than a good handful of potential hits. Have A Nice Day lives up to its greeting.