Slippery When Wet
wasn't just a breakthrough album for
Bon Jovi
; it was a breakthrough for hair metal in general, marking the point where the genre officially entered the mainstream. Released in 1986, it presented a streamlined combination of pop, hard rock, and metal that appealed to everyone -- especially girls, whom traditional heavy metal often ignored.
was more indebted to pop than metal, though, and the band made no attempt to hide its commercial ambition, even hiring an outside songwriter to co-write two of the album's biggest singles. The trick paid off as
became the best-selling album of 1987, beating out contenders like
Appetite for Destruction
,
The Joshua Tree
, and
Michael Jackson
's
Bad
.
Part of the album's success could be attributed to
Desmond Child
, a behind-the-scenes songwriter who went on to write hits for
Aerosmith
Michael Bolton
Ricky Martin
. With
Child
's help,
penned a pair of songs that would eventually define their career --
"Living on a Prayer"
and
"You Give Love a Bad Name"
-- two teenage anthems that mixed
Springsteen
's blue-collar narratives with straightforward, guitar-driven hooks. The band's characters may have been down on their luck -- they worked dead-end jobs, pined for dangerous women, and occasionally rode steel horses -- but
never presented a problem that couldn't be cured by a good chorus, every one of which seemed to celebrate a glass-half-full mentality. Elsewhere, the group turned to nostalgia, using songs like
"Never Say Goodbye"
"Wild in the Streets"
to re-create (or fabricate) an untamed, sex-filled youth that undoubtedly appealed to the band's teen audience.
wasn't nearly as hard-edged as
Moetley Cruee
or technically proficient as
Van Halen
, but the guys smartly played to their strengths, shunning the extremes for an accessible, middle-of-the-road approach that wound up appealing to more fans than most of their peers. "It's alright if you have a good time,"
Jon Bon Jovi
sang on
's first track,
"Let It Rock,"
and those words essentially served as a mantra for the entire hair metal genre, whose carefree, party-heavy attitude became the soundtrack for the rest of the '80s. ~ Andrew Leahey