Bon Jovi

Bon Jovi came out of Sayreville, New Jersey, in 1983 with big hair, bigger choruses and a knack for turning heavy metal's thunder into something your little sister could sing along to. Jon Bon Jovi sang and played guitar, Richie Sambora played guitar, co-wrote the songs and reached for a talk box when he needed it, David Bryan handled the keyboards, Alec John Such played bass and Tico Torres drummed.

The 1984 debut, Bon Jovi, got "Runaway", a breathless rush, into the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, and 7800° Fahrenheit followed in 1985 with "In and Out of Love". Then came Slippery When Wet in 1986, and everything changed. "You Give Love a Bad Name" and "Livin' on a Prayer" both went to number one, one a slap of a chorus, the other a fist-pumping singalong built for the back row. "Wanted Dead or Alive" slowed down and brooded, dusty and road-weary. Glam metal had found its arena kings.

New Jersey, in 1988, kept the machine rolling, with 5 Top 10 singles, among them the number ones "Bad Medicine" and "I'll Be There for You". Keep the Faith, in 1992, went double platinum on the back of the ballad "Bed of Roses", and "Always", in 1994, became their biggest-selling and longest-charting single. Such left that year. These Days, in 1995, sounded older and wiser.

Crush arrived in 2000 and "It's My Life" won them a whole new, younger audience. Have a Nice Day followed in 2005, and its single "Who Says You Can't Go Home" took the band into country music, winning a Grammy and making them the first rock band ever to send a single to the top of the country charts. Sambora left in 2013, Phil X and Hugh McDonald joined the lineup in 2016, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the band in 2018. By then they had sold more than 130 million records worldwide.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.