Emerging in the wake of the '80s pop-metal boom, Bon Jovi's early recordings fused the crass
popcraft of Journey and Starship with the average-Joe populism of Bruce Springsteen for a
sound that aspired to rock&roll grandeur without achieving it.

Bon Jovi is a hard rock band from Sayreville, New Jersey. Fronted by lead singer and name
sake Jon Bon Jovi, the group originally achieved large-scale success in the 1980s. Over the past
25 years, Bon Jovi has sold over 120 million albums worldwide, including 34 million in the
United States alone.

Bon Jovi formed in 1983 with lead singer Jon Bon Jovi, guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist
David Bryan, bassist Alec John Such, and drummer Tico Torres. Other than the departure of
Alec John Such in 1994 (which pared the lineup down to a quartet), the lineup has remained the
same for the past 25 years.

Few bands embodied the era of pop-metal like Bon Jovi. By merging Def Leppard's loud but
tuneful metal with Bruce Springsteen's working-class sensibilities, the New Jersey-based quintet
developed an ingratiatingly melodic and professional variation of hard rock one that appealed as
much to teenagers as to housewives. Bon Jovi skillfully employed professional songwriters to give
their songs, especially their power ballads, an appropriately commercial sheen, inaugurating a trend
that dominated mainstream hard rock and metal for the next decade. They also made simple
performance videos that emphasized lead singer Jon Bon Jovi's photogenic good looks, and these
clips helped propel 1986's Slippery When Wet and 1988's New Jersey into multi-platinum status
around the world. Both records were criticized for being more pop than metal, as well as being
targeted toward teenyboppers, yet the group managed to subtly change its image in the early '90s,
moving away from metal and concentrating on straightforward arena rock and big ballads. The shift
in style worked, and Bon Jovi were the only American pop-metal band of the '80s to retain a sizable
audience in the '90s.

After two moderately successful albums in 1984 and 1985, the band scored big with Slippery When
Wet (1986)and New Jersey (1988), which sold a combined 19 million copies in the U.S. alone,
charted eight Top Ten hits (including four number one hits), and launched the band into global super
stardom. After non-stop touring, the band went on hiatus after the New Jersey Tour in 1990, during
which time Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora both released successful solo albums. In 1992, the band
returned with the double platinum Keep the Faith and has since created a string of platinum albums
throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

In 2006, the band won a Grammy for best Country Collaboration for "Who Says You Can't Go Home"
with Jennifer Nettles from Sugarland and also became the first rock band to reach #1 on the Hot
Country Songs chart with the same song. The band has also received multiple Grammy nominations
for music from the albums Crush, Bounce, and Lost Highway.

Throughout their career, the band has released ten studio albums, of which nine have gone platinum. In
addition, the band has charted 19 singles to the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, four of which reached
#1 ("You Give Love a Bad Name", "Livin' on a Prayer", "Bad Medicine", and "I'll Be There for You").
The band also holds the record for the most weeks for a hard rock album at #1 on the Billboard 200 with
Slippery When Wet, as well as the most Top 10 singles from a hard rock album, with New Jersey, which
charted five such singles.

The Bon Jovi lineup, which remained stable for a decade, was :
    * Jon Bon Jovi (lead vocals, rhythm guitar)
    * Richie Sambora (lead guitar, backing vocals)
    * David Bryan (keyboard, backing vocals)
    * Tico Torres (drums, percussion)
    * Alec John Such (bass guitar, backing vocals)

Bon Jovi reunited in 1999 to record the song "Real Life" for the movie EdTV. David Bryan didn't make
it to the filming of the video for the song because of a hand injury sustained in a home improvement mishap,
so the band used a cardboard cutout of him for the shoot.