Lost Highway

Lost Highway is an ambitious work that adds a warm, Nashville-derived country feel to Bon Jovi’s big choruses and accessible melody. Following the success of the previous album’s “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” it takes in country-music elements more seriously. The rich colors of acoustic guitar and pedal steel create a soft, vast distant view in the songs. The lightness of the opening title track “Lost Highway” and the sorrowful ballad “(You Want to) Make a Memory,” a Grammy-winning duet with country singer LeAnn Rimes, vividly show the band’s pop, lyrical strength from another angle, while cuts like “Summertime,” “We Got It Going On” and “Whole Lot of Leavin’” convey the work’s fullness. A record that, never erasing rock’s straight power, deliberately chose a warmer, more human face. The fusion with country greatly widened the band’s musical range. It achieved great commercial success too, again reaching number one on the US chart. Showing Bon Jovi’s new challenge and its maturity, it is an engaging, fulfilling work.