Bon Jovi: 100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong (2004) Review

Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t accuse Bon Jovi of being lazy.

Rather than celebrate their landmark twentieth year together – and an astonishing 100 millionth record sale – with a basic Greatest Hits collection, the New Jersey cowboys decided to give their long-term listeners a couple of real treats.

First came the surprising This Left Feels Right, on which they re-worked their best-known songs into moody acoustic ballads, and now that’s been followed with 100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong – a monstrous 4-disc treasure trove which features B-sides, alternate versions, and outtakes from the band’s storied career.

Just Keep Working

The sheer size of this collection is somewhat daunting.

It features 51 tracks which were recorded at various stages of their career between 1983 and 2003.

Considering this release arrived in the pre-YouTube era, the vast majority of this material was “brand new” to the ears of fans who hadn’t been lucky enough to pick up special editions or limited releases of certain albums over the years.

The mind-bending level of dedication shown by the band here deserves some serious applause.

Then again, their crazy work ethic has been well-documented by now, so should we have expected anything less from a band who once played six concerts per week for four years straight?!?!

The Good, The Bad, And The Unnecessary

As you’d expect with such a vast collection, a fair amount of this material won’t really appeal to casual listeners.

For example, early demo versions of tracks like Always and Livin’ On A Prayer.

There’s also a smattering of not-quite-finished (mostly acoustic) ballads which don’t really go anywhere of interest.

But in the midst of this vast sea of rarities and oddities, you’ll find 8-10 stonking pieces of work which were easily good enough to have featured on the band’s main studio LPs, only to be left on the cutting room floor for one reason or another.

Finding The Gems

The barnstorming Good Guys Don’t Always Wear White steal the show here.

It’s a devilishly good hard rock track which features an impressive vocal performance, which was written for the soundtrack to The Cowboy Way as a favour to the frontman’s Young Guns II buddy Keifer Sutherland.

When the movie bombed, the soundtrack disappeared from shelves, and this song was instead scheduled to appear on Bon Jovi’s next studio album, only to be cut from These Days (1995) at the eleventh hour due to it not fitting the overall feel of the record.

It was subsequently lost in time.

Elsewhere, the previously unreleased Slippery When Wet track Edge Of A Broken Heart does a good job of showing how much of a hot streak the band were on circa 1986, and is more than strong enough to have had a single release of it’s own.

It’s pleasing that songs of this calibre are finally being given a chance to shine brightly.

“Yeah, that track was absolutely appropriate for Slippery When Wet. Coulda, shoulda, woulda been on the record had cooler heads prevailed at the time. By releasing it now, consider this my formal apology.”

– Jon Bon Jovi

“Yeah, that track was absolutely appropriate for Slippery When Wet.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda been on the record had cooler heads prevailed at the time.

By releasing it now, consider this my formal apology.”

– Jon Bon Jovi

Adaptation

Bon Jovi’s ability to adapt has always separated them from their rivals.

For instance, their ability to phase out the syrup-filled synths of the 80s for a rawer, storytelling lyrical style in the early 90s is what ultimately kept them alive at a time when they were fighting for their lives against the full force of the grunge wave.

It’s something they’ve done time and time again since then, too.

So with that in mind, one of the more interesting aspects of this sprawling boxset is that you can hear these subtle changes occuring in real time. Each disc contains a handful of entries from five eras of their sound – the early years (1983-1984), hair metal (1985-1989), hard rock (1990-1994), alt-rock (1995-2000), and the modern era (2001-2003).

Digging Deeper

Aside the aforementioned standouts, there’s a handful of other diamonds buried in the rough.

One of the early nineties outtakes, The Radio Saved My Life Tonight, manages to bottle the energy of a band in transition by showcasing the ridgier, grounded form of rock which they returned with in the face of the all-consuming grunge wave.

They then double down harder with the soaring choruses of james like Flesh And Bone and Taking It Back.

Meanwhile, you’ll hear them doing their very best Bryan Adams impression on the uplifting Garageland.

It’s a track which reminds us that, despite their huge stardom, at their core they remain the same group of guys who have been playing together since the early eighties, when Jon Bon Jovi would volunteer at his uncle’s recording studio in exchange for 30 minutes of free studio time at the end of his shift.

And finally, catchy mid-90s rocker Why Aren’t You Dead? delivers the immortal line:

"You said you could'nt live without me...
So why aren't you dead?"

WHY AREN'T YOU DEAD?

Bon Jovi: 100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong

The strength of Bon Jovi’s catalogue is impressive.

As such, while this is not the kind of product we would usually cover, we felt it warranted a full-length review.

For even though you won’t find anything of the quality of their biggest work here (e.g. Livin’ On A Prayer), there’s enough quality scattered across these four discs to make us question why the band kept some of this material locked in the vault for so long instead of putting them to better use.

This is especially true of the material from the early-to-mid 1990s, which could’ve easily slotted into the likes of These Days, Crush and Bounce, because each of these albums suffered from a lacklustre second half due to a lack of uptempo rockers just like the ones featured in this very collection.

51-tracks is excessive by anybody’s standards, but had they put this out as a shorter, tigher compilation (see our recommended tracklisting below for this), we’d consider 100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong to be a very solid record.

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