Bon Jovi are billing their 11th album as a back-to-rock move, following on the heels of 2007's country-tinged Lost Highway, which featured duets with Music City stars. It does rock — if your idea of rock is Aerosmith doing Diane Warren songs. Predictable and immaculately produced, these arena-shakers offer a familiar brand of Jersey cheese, but where Jon Bon Jovi once was kind of quixotic ("Livin' on a Prayer"), he's more contemplative than ever, turning out meditations like "Live Before You Die" ("There'll come a day when you have to say hello to goodbye"). Ah, well, at least blue-collar anthems like "Work for the Working Man" mean well.

“Oh Sherrie”

Steve Perry's girlfriend Sherrie Swafford was actually in the studio when Perry began writing this song--his lone Top Ten hit as a solo act--with two co-writers. The trio began at midnight one night with just "Oh, Sherrie!" and "hold on, hold on." Three hours later, they had a complete song. Swafford, however, had to wait until the next day to hear it. "Sherrie actually got tired and went to bed," Perry said. She also appeared in the video, but their relationship did not hold on for long.