Bon Jovi celebrated their 20th anniversary – and their 100,000,000th record sale – by dropping this sprawling 4-disc compilation of out-takes, rarities, and B-sides.

100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong features tracks written throughout various stages of their career, and while These Go To Eleven wouldn’t normally review a release primarily aimed towards super fans and collectors, we made an exception in this case because the content is so vast.

There are some real gems buried within the 51-tracks here, and we’re going to show you how to find them.

It’s Bon Jovi; of course they’re wearing gold suits.

One of the things which makes 100 Million such a good listen is that nobody really expected it to produce any treats. Let’s face it, Jon and the boys have always had a skill for identifying potential hit singles, so the chances of there being anything hidden in the vault which hadn’t already been exploited were slim to none, right?

Actually, wrong.

You won’t find anything close to the likes of You Give Love A Bad Name or Keep The Faith here, but this 4-disc set still unlocks a handful of tracks which will catch your attention.

And that brings us to the main issue – it’s simply too vast for casual listeners to entertain! At a whopping four discs and 50+ tracks, the highlights are scattered across such a broad space that it dilutes the overall quality of the listening experience. Had Bon Jovi decided instead to release a shorter, tighter version of 100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong (see the playlist below) it would have been a very solid album indeed.

Each disc focuses on a different era of Bon Jovi’s career, so the each have their own “feel”.

It breaks things down into the early days (1981-1985), the hair metal days (1986-1990), their early nineties pomp (1991-1995), and the modern era (1996-2004).

Noteworthy highlights include the movie soundtrack duo of Good Guys Don’t Always Wear White and Edge Of A Broken Heart, each doing a good job of capturing the sound of a band at the peak of their powers as the rose to the pinnacle of the rock industry during the late 1980s.

One of the most impressive things about Bon Jovi over the years is that they learned how to adapt to changing musical tastes during a very volatile period in the rock scene, gradually replacing the high energy and syrup-filled synths of their bombastic 1980s output with a more mature song-writing style over the course of the 1990s.

This is something which the majority of their one-time rivals/contemporaries could not do, and the the great thing about 100 Million Fans is that you can hear these changes taking place over the course of the discs.

The gloss of their early work often resulted in Bon Jovi unfairly being labelled as “fake” and “for the girls” back in the day, despite them putting in more hours on the road than most of the bands receiving far more credit from the media for “living the life”.

This myth is finally laid to rest on understated rocker Garageland.

It has an endearing authenticity, reminding us of the fact that Bon Jovi consists of a group of lifelong friends who just love to play loud music and that one of the main reasons their live shows are so effective is that, unlike the majority of overly-manufactured rock bands who arrived in the mid-to-late 80s, these guys had played well over 1500 gigs before breakthrough album Slippery When Wet broke into the charts.

Elsewhere in the playlist, we get The Radio Saved My Life Tonight (an outtake from Keep The Faith). Despite being considerably more stripped back and less technical than their 80s material, it’s an incredibly strong effort which, besides making a few live appearances during the mid-90s, it’s questionable how it remained locked in the vault for so long.

Deeper into the collection you’ll find barnstorming jams like Taking It Back (what a chorus!) and Flesh And Bone (seriously, what a chorus!), both of which could have been strong contenders for the These Days album had they been tidied up, and these are matched by the incredibly catchy Why Aren’t You Dead?, which tells the story of a failed relationship to which the frontman delivers the immortal line:

“You said you couldn’t live without me,
So why aren’t you dead?”

Why Aren’t You Dead?

100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong presents us with an interestingly conundrum.

You see, it’s understandable that Bon Jovi’s primary body of work was already jam-packed with plenty of high quality material, but why weren’t any of these outtakes used on the LPs which arrived in the modern era? After all, the biggest criticism of the likes of These Days, Crush, and Bounce is that they ran out of steam due to a lack of rockers like these.

Either way, it makes for an interesting listen.

As Bon Jovi celebrate their 20th anniversary, they seem to have arrived at a turning point in their career. It will be interesting to see where they go from here, and considering they’ve just cleared out the vault, it appears that any material moving forward is going to be freshly prepared.

In summary:

There are some real bangers on this 4-disc collection of out-takes which could’ve featured on some of their biggest albums, but the bulk of this monstrous 51-song compilation will only appeal to super fans.

100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong receives 6/11.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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