Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most successful hair band albums ever and one of the best-selling albums period of the 1980s: Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet. This is the album that vaulted Bon Jovi from a mid-level band to superstars.
Slippery When Wet topped the Billboard album charts for 8 weeks (and was in the Top 5 for an incredible 38 weeks), and was the #1 album on the year-end Billboard album charts for 1987. It has gone platinum twelve times over in the U.S. On top of that, it was the first hard rock album to feature three Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: "Livin' On a Prayer" (#1), "You Give Love a Bad Name" (#1), and "Wanted Dead or Alive" (#7).
I am going with "Wanted Dead or Alive" for this week's Retro Video of the Week because, while I love all three of the aforementioned songs, the video for "Wanted Dead or Alive" has always been one of my favorites. It's one of the classic "on-the-road" videos, featuring shots of the band playing live shows and otherwise hanging out while traveling to and from shows. My favorite part is at about the 3:25 mark, just as the line "I've seen a million faces / and I've rocked them all" is sung, and they show the shot of the house lights being brought up on the crowd, with Jon Bon Jovi thrusting the mic in the air. Ahh, to be a concert goer in the '80s.
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