#43 - All I Want is Everything

Artist: Bon Jovi
Album: These Days (bonus track)
Other Versions: None that I know of
Era: 90s "moody rock"

Lyrics

My friend's trying to tell me picking a bonus track for my "song I don't like off favorite album" entry is cheating but she didn't specify so I'm doing it anyway. Fight the power.

It's a big sign that this song has talkbox and I don't like it. We all know how I feel about talkbox.

I'm not sure I can pinpoint why I don't like this one. Part of it is the lyrics are really lackluster - it's like Jon had a bet with Richie to see how many times he could rhyme "thing" with..."thing". I hope he won, because he sure tried hard. The lyrics to the verses - nothing really special. I think it comes across as trying way too hard to paint a bleak picture. They did it so well with "These Days" and "Hey God", but here it just doesn't feel right. I do like "I said all it's about / is the boy checked out / couldn't handle reality".

I almost never have anything bad to say about the guys' backing vocals, but Christ they get on my nerves here. I wonder if they got locked in a room with a small child with a cold so they'd catch it and all wind up with "nasally cold voice". They did something, because all the backing vocals are coming out of noses.

The instrumentation is fairly boring. I like the guitar riff, but it's so generic. It would do well in a song with less focus on guitar, but there's minimal bass and no keyboard in this one so that fairly good but generic riff has to carry the song, and it's not good enough to combat the mediocre lyrics.

I like the drumming (what's new?). The drum work and Jon's voice receive the distinct homor of being the only things in this one that don't irritate me. In the same way that being included on Bounce makes "The Distance" sound that much better, being included on the phenomenal These Days makes "All I Want" sound significantly worse.

My Rating: 2/10

Edited 3/25/06: Added lyrics