Rocketing to stardom in the wake of the Eighties pop-metal boom, Bon Jovi's early recordings fused the crass popcraft of Journey and Starship with the average-Joe populism of Bruce Springsteen for a sound that aspired to rock & roll grandeur. 

 Rocketing to stardom in the wake of the Eighties pop-metal boom, Bon Jovi's early recordings fused the crass popcraft of Journey and Starship with the average-Joe populism of Bruce Springsteen for a sound that aspired to rock & roll grandeur. 

 The band is nearly redeemed by Slippery When Wet, an album which in its better moments–"Livin' on a Prayer," say, or "Wanted Dead or Alive"–actually delivers enough melodic razzle-dazzle to make the band's shameless posturing forgivable. 

 Unfortunately, the band's massive sales encouraged the lads to show how little success had changed them, which they did through the bombastic Springsteenisms of New Jersey.  

 Jon Bon Jovi released the solo album-cum-soundtrack Blaze of Glory (written for the film Young Guns II), which updates "Wanted Dead or Alive" but otherwise makes the Wild West sound very tame. 

 After regrouping, the band quickly returned to form with the cheerfully clichŽd Keep the Faith, which at least balanced the bombast with the corny but heartfelt ballad "Bed of Roses."  

 Cross Road, a relentlessly tuneful best-of, has charms enough to be a guilty pleasure for all but the most cynical, and even adds to the canon with "Always." 

 From there, the band continued on as if the Nineties never happened, cranking out variations on the old formula and somehow continuing to fill arenas. It hardly matters that These Days sounds like it should have been called Those Days. 

 Destination Anywhere, Jon Bon Jovi's second solo project, sounds more like a collection of demos than a fully-realized album, but it did give the singer the opportunity to flex his melodrama muscles on "August 7, 4:15."  

 Crush is summed up in the chorus to "Two Story Town," which complains of "the same old sights, the same old sounds." 

 Bounce finds the band briefly revitalized by the tragedy of 9/11. Not that the blunt, jingoistic "Undivided" deserves to be remembered. 

 Like the Boss on Tracks, Bon Jovi plundered its vaults big time for 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong, a four-disc boxed set featuring 50 unreleased and rare songs. This completists-only behemoth has little worthwhile material. 

 The smirking face on the cover of Have a Nice Day sets the tone for Bon Jovi's (often bitter) thoughts on middle age. The subjects of the songs "just want to be loved" but aren't afraid to apply a little working class hero elbow grease to get the 

 The smirking face on the cover of Have a Nice Day sets the tone for Bon Jovi's (often bitter) thoughts on middle age. The subjects of the songs "just want to be loved" but aren't afraid to apply a little working class hero elbow grease. 

 The band is back in familiar generic stadium rock territory on The Circle, which splits the difference between weighty, U2-style ruminations ("When We Were Beautiful") and sub-Springsteen-ian anthemry ("We Weren't Born To Follow").