Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet

[CurtisLoew]

Would Bon Jovi been as big a band if the original LP cover was used for Slippery?

Everything else the same (singles, videos, Jon and Richie still look/sound the same), but assume the marketing and promo maybe revolved around wet t-shirt contests and similar.

Lord knows, I would've bought it on vinyl, picture disc, cassette and eventually, CD, (plus a life-sized poster), but would women and girls have bought the album in the numbers they did?

Obviously, a huge reason they got as big as they did was their appeal to the fairer sex.

Clearly, girls bought Warrant's "Cherry Pie" release, but that wasn't quite as in your face as "Slippery."

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

[auslander]

A fair call I reckon. But if Jon only cared about what his current fans want, he'd just have pictures of himself on every album cover and he'd keep selling by truckloads to all the middle-aged housewives.

[Captain Howdy]

7 hours ago, CurtisLoew said:

Would Bon Jovi been as big a band if the original LP cover was used for Slippery?

Everything else the same (singles, videos, Jon and Richie still look/sound the same), but assume the marketing and promo maybe revolved around wet t-shirt contests and similar.

Lord knows, I would've bought it on vinyl, picture disc, cassette and eventually, CD, (plus a life-sized poster), but would women and girls have bought the album in the numbers they did?

Obviously, a huge reason they got as big as they did was their appeal to the fairer sex.

Clearly, girls bought Warrant's "Cherry Pie" release, but that wasn't quite as in your face as "Slippery."

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

I don't think it would have made a difference to girls back then as lets face it, this was the MTV era and the music videos alone were enough to sell the band to a female audience. I don't think a wet trash bag was gonna sell it to them any better.

The big difference though is the album would not have been as readily available considering that certain stores refused to carry it, hence the change of cover.

I actually have the Jap import with the original cover on CD, so at least one country did not care, and they were still hugely popular in Japan.

[Darkstone]

I had the revised cover on LP when it was released, based on seeing the video for "Livin' on a Prayer".

I was 14.

My Mum was pretty cool, so If it was released down here with the original cover, then I would still have been able to get it.

I'm sure there would be many parents at the time though who would baulk at a cover like that, particularly parents of daughters.

It's an interesting question. 

 

 

[Geoff]

I tend to think it would still have been massive and that the cover wouldn’t really have changed sales, but who knows? I just think that album with those songs was going to get thoroughly purchased, regardless of the cover. 
 

I wonder if the cover model spent a lot of her life in the what could have been zone. I wonder what her life and career was like compared to what it might have been if that was the only version of the album. 

[CureTheSane]

No real difference at all.

Great songs are great songs 

You think More Than Words would have been a bigger song with a different album cover?

Or Warrants Heaven?

Or Look What The Cat Dragged In?

[gener8tr]

One of the best albums of our genre.  If anything, the gal cover would have helped it sell even more cassette tapes.  Can't tell you how many cassettes I purchased back then based on the album covers alone.