Which isn't necessarily bad, mind you - Bon Jovi has a flair for commercial craft, knowing how to hit the sweet spot between the mundane and melodic, and there are times on Lost Highway where the group does so again.

Not long after the buried fiddles on 'Lost Highway' fade from memory and enough time passes to excuse the bad Toby Keith knockoff 'Summertime,' it's virtually impossible to distinguish this album anything after 1992's Keep the Faith. Despite duets with LeAnn Rimes and Big & Rich, despite the occasional fiddle or steel guitar, Lost Highway recalls nothing so much as a latter-day Bon Jovi record in how it balances fist-pumping arena anthems with heavy doses of sentiment. But when it comes right down to it, Bon Jovi's self-styled country album has little to do with contemporary country in 2007, either. In that regard, it makes perfect sense for Bon Jovi to refashion themselves as a modern country act, because their heartland anthems are as thoroughly middle American as any country artist, and in 2007 country was at the core of mainstream pop music in other words, the band's fans already have made the crossover, so they wouldn't see this crossover move as crass, just as catching up. Lost Highway has little to do with any country prior to Garth Brooks, a move that makes sense since Garth was the gateway drug to country music for old Bon Jovi fans in the '90s.

Serious country fans know that 'Lost Highway' is a Leon Payne-written Hank Williams classic, but even though Bon Jovi's 2007 album shamelessly trades on iconographic country imagery in a bid for a genre-skipping crossover hit, it's designed for those country fans who don't much care about Hank's legend (never mind knowing anything about Leon Payne).

Bon jovi albums list