Slippery When Wet transformed Bon Jovi from minor-league poodle rockers to global superstars on the back of hit singles "You Give Love a Bad Name," "Never Say Goodbye," and, of course, "Living on a Prayer." From the scantily clad car-wash girls on the inner sleeve to the "You lost more than that in my back seat / Yeah!" lyrics, the album is blissfully untouched by irony and subtlety, which actually adds to its charm. With guitarist Richie Sambora and songwriter Desmond Child, Jon Bon Jovi has produced a slew of consistently memorable tunes, and this album contains its fair share of them. Slippery When Wet won't change your world, but it will, undoubtedly, rock it. --Ronita Dutta

Few bands embodied the era of pop-metal like Bon Jovi. 

By merging Def Leppard's loud but tuneful metal with Bruce Springsteen's working-class sensibilities, the New Jersey-based quintet developed an ingratiatingly melodic and professional variation of hard-rock — one that appealed as much to teenagers as to housewives. Bon Jovi skillfully employed professional songwriters to give their songs, especially their power ballads, an appropriately commercial sheen, inaugurating a trend that dominated mainstream hard rock and metal for the next decade. They also made simple performance videos that emphasized lead singer Jon Bon Jovi's photogenic good looks, and these clips helped propel 1986's Slippery When Wet and 1988's New Jersey into multi-platinum status around the world. Both records were criticized for being more pop than metal, as well as being targeted toward teenyboppers, yet the group managed to subtly change their image in the early '90s, moving away from metal and concentrating on straightforward arena-rock and big ballads. The shift in style worked, and Bon Jovi were the only American pop-metal band of the '80s to retain a sizable audience in the '90s. - Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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80's Lyrics - Dead or Alive Bon Jovi