Bon Jovi: Bounce (2002) Review

Having successfully reclaimed their throne with Crush, seasoned rockers Bon Jovi looked to capitalize.

So with that in mind, it makes perfect sense that follow-up effort Bounce would take all of it’s predecessor’s biggest moments and amplify them to eleven.

Lots of power chords… check!

I’d-die-for-you-baby lyrics… check!

General cool posturing… check!

However, it results in a rather jarring listening experience.

Challenging Times

Several of Bounce’s tracks were conceived during the making of Crush.

In the midst of the recording sessions, however, the occurrence of the 9/11 terrorist attacks – which took place a stone’s throw away from the band’s hometown of New Jersey – led Jon Bon Jovi into a creative spree in which several new, unplanned songs were written for the album.

This two-tone approach means that the record quite literally bounces from one extreme to the other, as the glossy anthems which we expect from Bon Jovi sit alongside tracks overflowing with jagged emotion.

“Bounce. The thing I like about that word is that it means different things to different people. To me, what it really means is when adversity hits you, you can bounce back from it.”

– David Bryan

“Bounce.

The thing I like about that word is that it means different things to different people.

To me, what it really means is when adversity hits you, you can bounce back from it.”

– David Bryan

Another One

Bon Jovi have always been a singles band, and every album always contains at least one track which will eventually grab a spot on what’s likely to be amongst the best Greatest hits collections ever made.

The energetic Everyday seems to be the most likely candidate from this bunch.

It’s a three minute dose of chorus-heavy rock which delivers fistfuls of the guitar hooks and just-keep-going lyrics which their fanbase crave, and it does it well enough to warrant multiple listens.

And although it never scales the heights of uber-hit It’s My Life from two years earlier, it did become an unexpected international smash, landing at #5 in the UK singles chart.

Come Together

Lyrically, Jon Bon Jovi is on fire.

In fact, we’ll go as far as to say this might be his best piece of work yet.

Of course, the subject matter plays an important role in this achievement.

For while his mid-90s material focused heavily on relatable problems like the challenges of growing older and feeling washed up, on Bounce he’s pushing his boundaries as a songwriter as he tries to channel the raw outrage of 9/11 in the hopes of pulling the American people together.

And when it works, it works spectacularly.

Opening track Undivided remains one of the few tracks from this era which was able to bottle the anger and hurt which swept the nation in the immediate aftermath of those tragic events in New York on September 11th, 2001, and it’s quite captivating to hear Jon Bon Jovi attempting to morph his listeners’ reactive thirst for war into an anthem of hope and a drive to be better.

This will be remembered as one of the best tracks of their career, and it’s easily the standout moment on Bounce.

"How many hands,
How many hearts,
How many dreams,
Been torn apart,
Enough."

UNDIVIDED

Reconnecting With Their Inner Child

Bounce saw the much-anticipated return of Desmond Child.

Despite not working together for eight years prior to this record, Child’s fingerprints remained all over their discography, having helped them pen the likes of Livin’ On A Prayer, You Give Love A Bad Name, and Keep The Faith.

And although he doesn’t create anything near that standard here, his presence is still positive.

This is mainly because it appears Child’s involement in the creative process motivates Bon Jovi to push themselves.

For example, while the frontman was acting in TV drama Ally McBeal, he wrote soppy ballad Open All Night as a back-and-forth dialogue between his character Victor Morrison and Calista Flockhart’s high-flying lawyer.

Meanwhile, catchy singalong Misunderstood has him apologise profusely to his wife – something he’s been doing since 1992 – for missing out on an important chunk of their family life as a result of the his double life as a rockstar.

Finally, the chugging rocker Hook Me Up was inspired by a newspaper article which tells the story of a young Palestinian man who became trapped in enemy terrotiry and spent three gruelling days attempting to make contact with the outside world using a severely damaged ham radio.

Let’s be honest, Bon Jovi don’t need to be going to such lengths.

Most of their fans would’ve been satisfied with a simple It’s My Life re-hash, so they deserve all the flowers for having the gumption to put in this much effort and, as they enter an impressive third decade together, perhaps this is a good indicator as to how they’ve been able to survive for as long as they have.

“It’s always been our way, to try to find the optimism in everything, you know? We wrote Keep The Faith after the riots in LA, and we wrote songs like Everyday and Bounce after what happened at the World Trade Center. This is just how we’re hard-wired, as people, that when things affect us on an emotional level we have to find a way to push through the hurt and the shock and be optimistic that things are gonna get better.”

– Jon Bon Jovi

“It’s always been our way, to try to find the optimism in everything, you know?

We wrote Keep The Faith after the riots in LA, and we wrote songs like Everyday and Bounce after what happened at the World Trade Center.

This is just how we’re hard-wired, as people, that when things affect us on an emotional level we have to find a way to push through the hurt and the shock and be optimistic that things are gonna get better.”

– Jon Bon Jovi

Dry County

One of the biggest pitfalls of Bounce is that it doesn’t feature any elite power ballads.

I know, I know.

This is usually “bread and butter” for Bon Jovi, right?

Don’t get me wrong, entries like Thank You For Loving Me, Right Side Of Wrong and Love Me Back To Life aren’t necessarily bad songs, but we’ve grown accustomed to these New Jersey cowboys taking this kind of material to significantly higher levels, whether it be via emotion-laced lyrics (Always), or soaring guitar solos (Bed Of Roses), or interesing dual lead vocals (I’ll Be There For You).

Now, had Bounce featured just one ballad we could easily have overlooked this issue, but with a whopping six out of the twelve total tracks on the record it becomes a real momentum killer.

"The first time I saw you,
It felt like coming home."

YOU HAD ME FROM HELLO

Riff Raff

Richie Sambora’s new guitar tone makes for another interesting feature.

The veteran rocker has apparently decided that he’s going to It’s My Life the fuck out of everything by swinging ultra-heavy riffs at any given opportunity.

But the strange thing is, with the exception of Undivided, there aren’t any songs on Bounce which necessarily need this kind of treatment.

In fact there’s several moments during its 49-minute runtime where you can almost hear David Bryan’s delicately crafted keyboard arrangements gasping for air beneath the weight of the guitar maestro’s Metallica-like lumbering axe!

“Undivided, obviously, is about 9/11. It was impossible not to have those feelings running through our veins during the first week of recording, because it had literally just happened right outside. When you make an album it starts as something very personal to you, and it can be scary to then put those feelings out into the world, so it’s gotta be something you really believe in. So there’s an underlying optimism which runs through this record, despite some of the subject matter, because that’s the way we grew up and that’s our outlook on life.”

– Richie Sambora

“Undivided, obviously, is about 9/11.

It was impossible not to have those feelings running through our veins during the first week of recording, because it had literally just happened right outside.

When you make an album it starts as something very personal to you, and it can be scary to then put those feelings out into the world, so it’s gotta be something you really believe in.

So there’s an underlying optimism which runs through this record, despite some of the subject matter, because that’s the way we grew up and that’s our outlook on life.”

– Richie Sambora

Bon Jovi: Bounce

Overall, Bounce is a solid yet unremarkable follow-up to Crush.

It’s a record which seems to confirm that Bon Jovi’s brand of glossy rock is unfazed by the ever-changing musical landscape which sits around them, and we expect it’ll double down on their status as one of the world’s biggest rock acts circa 2002.

The obvious 9/11 overtones add an interesting layer of depth and perspective to the record which separate it from the rest of Bon Jovi’s work, and it’s fair to say that a handful of these stadium-sized anthems do an adequate job of capturing the raw emotion of the time.

Finally, while Bounce never soars quite as high as we’ve known them to in the past, it also never really drops off, and this makes it a more consistent listen from start-to-finish than either of their two previous efforts (1995’s These Days and 2000’s Crush).

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