Slippery When Wet

The original cover of Bon Jovi’s third album featured a busty woman in a wet T-shirt with the words “Slippery When Wet” on the front, framed by a hot-pink border. Executives worried stores wouldn’t sell it, so they changed it to a wet garbage bag with the title streaked in black. One image was fun and trashy (figuratively, at least); the other was tough and stoic. That the band can pass as both spoke to what a huge phenomenon Slippery When Wet became upon its release in 1986. The members of Bon Jovi had enough of a taste of heavy metal to sound contemporary (“You Give Love a Bad Name”, “Social Disease”). But compared to pin-ups like Poison and Mötley Crüe, the group could also evoke the sound and feel of classic rock (“Livin’ On a Prayer”, “Wanted Dead or Alive”). And on Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi even taps into Lynyrd Skynyrd-like nostalgia (the ballad “Never Say Goodbye”) and Rod Stewart-indebted swagger (the rave-up “Wild in the Streets”).

And because Bon Jovi is, at heart, a pop band, the group pulls it all together with a seamlessness that makes you forget where they were coming from in the first place. And while a lot of their pop-metal peers ended up stranded on the last branch of an evolutionary tree, Bon Jovi—and Slippery When Wet—resonates both as a product of its time, and as another step in the continuum of loose-letting, party-hardy rock music.

Tracklisting

Position Title Duration
A1 Let It Rock 5:25
A2 You Give Love A Bad Name 3:53
A3 Livin’ On A Prayer 4:12
A4 Social Disease 4:17
A5 Wanted Dead Or Alive 5:07
B1 Raise Your Hands 4:17
B2 Without Love 3:32
B3 I’d Die For You 4:31
B4 Never Say Goodbye 4:48
B5 Wild In The Streets 3:52

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Release Images

Release Information

Key Value
Wikipedia URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_When_Wet
Format Vinyl LP Album Reissue Stereo (180 Gram)
Label Mercury
Catalog Number 06025 470 292-1 (8)
Notes Comes with a lyric inner sleeve and includes a download coupon. The sticker on the front of the shrink-wrap may vary.

The inner sleeve has different durations to the labels for all tracks except B4:
- A1: 5:27
- A2: 3:42
- A3: 4:09
- A4: 4:18
- A5: 5:08
- B1 4:16
- B2: 3:30
- B3: 4:30
- B5: 3:54

[Back cover and labels]
℗© 2016 Mercury Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
Made in the EU.

[Inner sleeve]
Recorded at Little Mountain, Vancouver, B.C.
Mastered by: Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound, New York
© 2016 Mercury Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
Discogs URL Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet