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Mercury Nashville
2007
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Bon Jovi
Lost Highway
About This Album
Serious country fans know that "Lost Highway" is a Leon Payne-written
Hank Williams
classic, but even though
Bon Jovi
's 2007 album shamelessly trades on iconographic country imagery in a bid for a genre-skipping crossover hit, it's designed for those country fans who don't much care about
Hank
's legend (never mind knowing anything about Leon Payne). Lost Highway has little to do with any country prior to
Garth Brooks
, a move that makes sense since
Garth
was the gateway drug to country music for old
Bon Jovi
fans in the '90s. In that regard, it makes perfect sense for
Bon Jovi
to refashion themselves as a modern country act, because their heartland anthems are as thoroughly middle American as any country artist, and in 2007 country was at the core of mainstream pop music; in other words, the band's fans already have made the crossover, so they wouldn't see this crossover move as crass, just as catching up. But when it comes right down to it,
Bon Jovi
's self-styled country album has little to do with contemporary country in 2007, either. Despite duets with
LeAnn Rimes
and
Big & Rich
, despite the occasional fiddle or steel guitar, Lost Highway recalls nothing so much as a latter-day
Bon Jovi
record in how it balances fist-pumping arena anthems with heavy doses of sentiment.
Not long after the buried fiddles on "Lost Highway" fade from memory and enough time passes to excuse the bad
Toby Keith
knockoff "Summertime," it's virtually impossible to distinguish this album anything after 1992's
Keep the Faith
. Which isn't necessarily bad, mind you --
Bon Jovi
has a flair for commercial craft, knowing how to hit the sweet spot between the mundane and melodic, and there are times on Lost Highway where the group does so again. Ironically enough, what hurts is when they
really
try to fit into the conventions of country -- usually on the rockers, as on the aforementioned "Summertime" and the even-worse
Big & Rich
duet "We Got It Going On," which manages to cram in every sports-bar cliché into an unpalatable mess, a talent that also emphasizes
Jon Bon Jovi
's unfortunate tendency to rely on hackneyed imagery -- but when they're just being the smooth, efficient pop crooners they are, Lost Highway is as good as, and no different than, any
Bon Jovi
album since
Keep the Faith
. Which may not make it as adventurous as it appears, but it should still be satisfying all the same to those loyal fans. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Continued…
Shortened View
Track List
(try tracks 1,2,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10)
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Leave a Comment about this album
/500
what is this?
MEL STEVE MCCARTY
says:
04-10-2009
done with pandora now paya
bguerci
says:
10-01-2008
one of the best i love it i mean she don't know me is my favorite song and you never hear it but all in all i love this album
maur1822
says:
05-09-2008
I've listened to Bon Jovi since the 1980's.I think he has an amazing voice which you can pick out of even unfamiliar songs.I wish rhem all cintued sucess and happiness.
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