These Days, a significant departure from Bon Jovi's previous work Image credits: Wikipedia


With the rise of grunge and pop in the early ‘90s, it seemed like rock n’ roll would surely fade away. Almost all the great rock n’ roll bands had retired and/or broken up, and the ones who were still out there seemed to have ‘lost their touch’. The Rolling Stones were on a break in the early ‘90s, Queen had lost their lead singer to AIDS and Guns n’ Roses broke up and Slash famously said that he would never come back, well atleast ‘not in this lifetime’. (Of course, it eventually did happen, but more on that later). U2 at the time was certainly the biggest names in the rock music scene, but their 1993 experimental ‘Zooropa’ wasn’t very well received, with critics saying that U2 was needlessly trying to ‘fit in’ to the new generation of electronic music.

The ‘90s saw a lot of new musical genres coming up, the grunge scene being the most popular, with names like Nirvana and Pearl Jam dominating the charts. The rise of Britpop was pretty massive as well, as Oasis and Blur became the most popular bands in the UK. And of course, there was the rise of the pop scene, with the Backstreet Boys becoming a household name, and in the heart of every American girl. It really did seem that with the death of Freddie Mercury, rock n’ roll was going to die.

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Oasis, widely regarded to have reinvented Britpop in the 90s. Image credits: Wikipedia


But there were still some people out there who hadn’t given up just yet. After the major success of their 1992 record ‘Keep the Faith’, Bon Jovi were on some sort of a ‘sabbatical’, trying to figure their personal lives out. With many bands changing their musical styles to try to fit in to the new era, Bon Jovi decided not to. In 1995, they released ‘These Days’ that has now been proclaimed as their greatest album ever! It was pure rock n’ roll, with a classic but darker Bon Jovi tone to it. It came out at a time when the death of rock n’ roll was inevitable. And then These Days knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the charts with a message that rock music was still alive and well!

Bon Jovi weren’t just a bunch of long haired teenagers trying to produce catchy rock music in the ‘80s. Their hair was shorter (comparatively) and the entire album was more mature - both lyrics and sound.

Work in Progress.