In summary:

Slippery When Wet is one of the best rock album’s ever made, capturing everything that was so great about the 80s rock scene, and showcasing a laser focused band who had been conditioned by years of touring.

Slippery When Wet receives 11/11.
★★★★★★★★★★★

Few could have predicted the massive jump Bon Jovi would make between flawed second album 7800° Fahrenheit and landmark third Slippery When Wet.

It’ll be remembered as one of the best rock albums ever made – and rightly so, because it’s packed with great anthems from start to finish!

Listening to it now, the band managed to capture everything which was so great about the mid-80s rock scene like lightning in a bottle, transporting the listener back to an era when the only thing bigger than the riffs was the hair, and Jon Bon Jovi was delivering over-the-top high fives in a way that made us feel like everything was going to be okay.

Sure it’s cheesy, sure it’s “of it’s time”… but it’s also awesome!

Considering how difficult it is to write one great rock song, Bon Jovi deserve all the flowers for coming up with three.

Eternal singalong Livin’ On A Prayer captures them at their very best, as does You Give Love A Bad Name (their first #1 hit), and the cowboy-tinged rocker Wanted: Dead Or Alive.

Although this is the three punch combo the album will be remembered for, there are plenty of other highlights, including the shred-tastic Raise Your Hands, which is sandwiched between the bombastic duo of Social Disease and I’d Die For You.

Each of these songs demonstrates not only how great Bon Jovi are at writing this type of music, but also how much the 4-years of non-stop touring which preceded Slippery When Wet had helped them to hone their craft.

That’s right, four years!

They were often unfairly labelled as “too girly” and “too nice” by the rock media (largely for their refusal to sing about sex, drugs, and and debauchery) but the truth is Bon Jovi were a lot closer to the real thing than most of their drug-fuelled contemporaries, having put in the hard hours which the majority of their rivals simply had not – even at this early stage of their career they had performed over 1000 gigs, and it really shows.

Producer Bruce Fairbairn also deserves a lot of credit for the success of this album.

The New Jersey rockers’ main objective was to present themselves as a headline act, having been mostly restricted to support slots. They would often finish tours having upstaged the headliners with their energy and super-tight performances, but somehow couldn’t convince their record label to let them top the bill instead.

They sought to end that problem by hiring Fairbairn to produce.

His reputation for huge rock anthems was exactly that they needed, and he didn’t disappoint, giving each of Slippery’s 12-tracks a stadium-sized level of production which catapulted them to the top of the charts and to the top of the bill.

Perhaps interesting is the lack of ballads.

Unlike their future work, which would double down on their ability to pen such songs, Slippery When Wet features just two; the poppy Without Love and the high school prom sounding Never Say Goodbye.

They’re not terrible, but this is a skill which the band would develop on later releases, and the real meat of this album lies within its crunching rockers, of which, only opener Let It Rock fails to deliver.

In the decades which have passed since Slippery When Wet was released, it has become a benchmark for any other band trying to create an upbeat rock album.

Everything about it is iconic, from it’s trio of world-beating singles, to it’s banned cover art and its replacement (which most people mistakenly think is written on a steamy shower window, but is really a garbage bag which Jon Bon Jovi had sprayed with water!).

It becomes the first album which thesegoto11 awards the coveted 11/11 score.

In summary:

Slippery When Wet is one of the best rock album’s ever made, capturing everything that was so great about the 80s rock scene, and showcasing a laser focused band who had been conditioned by years of touring.

Slippery When Wet receives 11/11.
★★★★★★★★★★★