Blog:Bon Jovi and Their Songs Deserved to Appear In a Lot of Movies

New Year's Eve, U-571, Young Guns II, Pay It Forward, John Carpenter Presents Vampires, Cry Wolf, National Lampoon's Pucked, Homegrown, the TV series Family Guy... I could go on and on. Jon Bon himself even starred in No Looking Back! Isn't that awesome? Heavy metal bands like Bon Jovi, Poison, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, Winger, and Motley Crue are way better than post-2000s music ever will be! "Livin' on a Prayer" is the greatest Bon Jovi song ever and there is no denying that!

Actually, no. Bon Jovi is not awesome because they are generic hard rock (formerly hair metal)! Seriously, they need to do something that doesn't make them everything wrong with New Jersey or the 1980s!

'''APRIL FOOLS! YOU ALL HAVE BEEN PRANKED!'''

Here Lies Rock and Roll
Born: July 19, 1954 Died: August 1976 Cause of death: Power ballads

Back in the '60s and '70s, rock 'n' rollers just wanted to kick butt and scare people. There were no mushy, romantic songs mixed in among the rockers on their albums and we liked it that way. Black Sabbath didn't release ballads. AC/DC didn't do them, either. The closest thing that Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith had to ballads were "Stairway to Heaven" (1971) and "Dream On" (1973), and even those tunes rock out near the end.

Back then, rock bands didn't have sensitive sides to make us fall in love with. They had no aspirations to tug at our heartstrings with lush, beautiful melodies and heartfelt lyrics. They left crap like that to Carpenter siblings Karen and John, the Bee Gees, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Paul Anka. Unfortunately, rock music began to change for the worse in the mid-1970s when KISS released "Beth" in August 1976; Nazareth had released "Love Hurts" the previous year and Chicago also released "If You Leave Me Now" (their first power ballad, and definitely not the last). These three songs were what we retroactively define today as "power ballads", and they were so successful that almost every rock album from the at least the mid-1980s to about 1991 had a power ballad on it; in the late '70s and early '80s, these songs were primarily written and performed by pop rock and AOR (album-oriented rock) bands like REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Genesis, and Styx.

Believe me when I tell you, other bands watched and took notes with their eyeliner pencils. And why not? They started to focus more on radio airplay, broad appeal, and sales than music. For many groups during the hair metal era (1983-1991), power ballads were the only true hits they ever had.
 * Poison had "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" (1988) and "Something to Believe In" (1990).
 * Mr. Big had "To Be With You" (1991).
 * Mr. Mister had "Broken Wings" (1985), their biggest hit on the Mainstream Rock and Adult Contemporary charts in America.
 * Cutting Crew had "I Just Died in Your Arms" (1986).
 * FireHouse had "When I Look Into Your Eyes" (1992) and "Love of a Lifetime" (1990).
 * Bad English had "Price of Love" (1989) and "When I See You Smile" (1989).
 * Kix had "Don't Close Your Eyes" (1988), the only hit song in their entire existence.
 * Warrant had "Heaven" (1989) and "I Saw Red" (1990).
 * Whitesnake had "Here I Go Again" (1987) and "Is This Love?" (1987), among others.
 * Aerosmith had "Cryin'" (1993), "Angel" (1987), "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" (1998), and "Hole in My Soul" (1997). "Angel" also became their first successful ballad since "Dream On" (1973).
 * Quiet Riot had "Twilight Hotel" (1986), one of their many underrated and obscure songs. Unlike most of them, however, it's not worth listening to.
 * Winger had "Headed for a Heartbreak" (1988).
 * Mötley Crüe had "Home Sweet Home" (1985) and "Without You" (1989).
 * REO Speedwagon had "Keep on Lovin' You" (1980), "Can’t Fight This Feeling" (1984), and "One Lonely Night" (1984).
 * Journey had a ton: "Lights" (1978), "Mother, Father" (1981), "Don't Stop Believing" (1981), "Who's Cryin' Now" (1981), "Open Arms" (1981), "Faithfully" (1983), "Feeling that Way" (1978), "Anytime" (1978), "After the Fall" (1983), and so on.
 * Skid Row had "I Remember You" (1989) and "18 and Life" (1989).
 * Scorpions had "Wind of Change" (1990) and "Still Loving You" (1984).
 * Foreigner had "I Want to Know What Love Is" (1984) and "Waiting for a Girl Like You" (1981).
 * Cinderella had "Nobody's Fool" (1986), "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1990), and "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)" (1988).
 * Guns N' Roses had "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (1991), "Yesterdays" (1992), "November Rain" (1991), and "Live and Let Die" (1991).
 * The Police had "Every Breath You Take" (1983).
 * Toronto had "What About Love?" (1982), which was later covered by Heart in 1985.
 * Heart had "Alone" (1987) and "These Dreams" (1985).
 * Starship had "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" (1987).
 * Van Halen had "Love Walks In" (1986) and "Right Now" (1991).
 * Cheap Trick had "The Flame" (1988). It became their only #1 hit.

All power ballads are complete and utter trash because they are so sappy and have made many people's teeth decay or made them go to sleep with their lush, beautiful melodies. They also try way too hard to be emotional and deep.

Enough With the Chit-Chat. Let’s Get Our Hands on Bon Jovi!
Bon Jovi, which this blog is supposed to be talking about because it has their name in the title, is incredibly generic and devoid of creativity—both of which have made many post-1970s rock bands bad yet commercially successful. They managed to make New Jersey an even worse state than it already was, along with MTV's Jersey Shore and its numerous spin-offs.

Have I forgotten to say that they even cater too much to blue-collar workers like heartland rock does? They really do. "Livin' on a Prayer" shoehorns economical and social class topics when they don't even serve any purpose. '''I have no stance in society or social classes and don't care about them. Political parties in the past and present seem to have taken advantage of economic and social events. I think middle and upper-class workers are constantly being ignored in many aspects of the media or treated like crap, kind of like how Hollywood in the 21st century tends to treat powerful women and people of color as if they never existed. That's very disrespectful'''. Representation in and outside of the media is important, but Bon Jovi has never done it well.

"Livin' on a Prayer" is somehow based around blue-collar workers' lives, as it revolves around a girl named Gina who works long hours at the diner like they do to make herself and Tommy (who "used to work on the docks", according to the song) a living. The whole song has nothing to do with anything in my opinion, and the whole topic of the song seems to have been forced down our throats without thought.

However, they have much bigger problems than their pandering to the working class, and they've given rock music a bad name due to those problems.

Why They Give Rock Music a Bad Name

 * 1) The majority of their songs are overproduced, as they suffer from having too many instrumental tracks and/or overdubs. They even perform live with parts of their songs on tape.
 * 2) They do the same stuff on almost every album like other classic rock bands such as AC/DC, the Eagles, Chicago, and Fleetwood Mac. Their albums all seem to consist of the same song repeated for multiple tracks, and they think they can't do anything other than simple rock anthems and pseudo-country songs or sappy, boring power ballads (which I discussed above).
 * 3) In the mid-1980s, they and Poison (who used to serve as a supporting act for QR) caused Quiet Riot's sales to go downhill and pushed them into obscurity with no more hits after Condition Critical or singles after QR III. Even the late Kevin DuBrow (R.I.P.) admitted that they were battling against Bon Jovi and Poison at the time, and they sadly failed. Almost no one remembers Quiet Riot anymore, aside from "Cum on Feel the Noize" and "Bang Your Head".
 * 4) They are another band falsely advertised as "heavy metal" when their material is light-hearted, unthreatening, and middle-of-the-road with very few metal elements. In contrast, heavy metal bands like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath can be very terrifying and evil.
 * 5) *Despite being primarily hair metal and hard rock, Bon Jovi also plays things way too safe. They feel like they were meant for workplaces or parents who haven't yet been convinced that rock music isn't so bad. In fact, they've never even ventured out of the safe zone for over 30 years.
 * 6) They copy other AOR and hard rock bands (mainly Foreigner, Journey, Styx, and REO Speedwagon) without doing many new things to keep them from being too formulaic, which in turn inspired many others (Winger, Poison, Warrant, Bad English, Damn Yankees, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat, etc.) to do the same.
 * 7) Richie Sambora and Phil X always play basic guitar chords and riffs. Even when they try to play licks or shred on their guitars, that isn't enough to make the songs any less generic or more interesting.
 * 8) They've never had a single good song. Way too many of them are also power ballads, which (as mentioned earlier) are way too sappy and will either make your teeth decay or put you to sleep.
 * 9) They are basically Journey all over again.
 * 10) *Much like Journey (whose most popular song is "Don't Stop Believin'"), Bon Jovi's most popular song ("Livin' on a Prayer") is overplayed in nearly every aspect of the media. It's like there is some unfamiliar secret about everyone knowing how bad the song is and trying to push it into every aspect of the media, which makes those people seem like they all love it in a weird attempt to troll.
 * 11) **Both groups are even far from (and have been mistaken as) one-hit wonders. Many people consider "Livin' on a Prayer" one of the most classic and best-written '80s songs... but that’s not their only hit nor is it the only Bon Jovi song they remember.
 * 12) ***Rick Astley, Dead or Alive (R.I.P. Pete Burns), Gummibär, Toni Basil, Crazy Frog, Eiffel 65, Caramell (because everyone on the internet knows "Caramelldansen", despite it not being a hit), Right Said Fred, A Flock of Seagulls, DEVO, and even A*Teens are all considered one-hit wonders. But Bon Jovi has many cheesy rock staples that are as overplayed on the radio as "Livin' on a Prayer" is. "You Give Love a Bad Name", "Runaway", "Always", "Dead or Alive", "Roller Coaster", "Blaze of Glory", "These Open Arms", "Wedding Day", "My Life", "Miracle", "Bad Medicine"... I could go on and on.
 * 13) *They are, in fact, catchy to the point of them being the musical equivalent of fast food. Because of all the movies mentioned above, Glee, and Family Guy, Bon Jovi is often thought of as some incredible group. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire world got wiped out and there were still radios that continued to play Bon Jovi songs till the end of time.
 * 14) They perform their songs instead of actually playing them most of the time, which is especially evident in their music videos.
 * 15) They used to have ridiculous, teased hairstyles like almost everyone else did throughout the decade.

Qualities That Are a Loaded Gun

 * 1) "Livin' on a Prayer" is their only tolerable song. It can even be considered "so bad, it's good".
 * 2) At least the members got haircuts and adopted a more contemporary pop rock style, though that isn't saying much since they're still heavily flawed.
 * 3) Quiet Riot was originally more successful than Bon Jovi, but not for very long.
 * 4) At least their songs have no Auto-Tune.
 * 5) Despite his band sucking ass, Jon Bon Jovi is actually a kind and helpful person in real life because he gave free meals to people in need at his restaurants.

Once again, everyone, APRIL FOOLS!