Most Influential Albums: Day Five

Although my musical tastes generally fall within the Pop or Rock genres, I did have a brief foray into the world of rap/hip hop in the early 1990s, mainly driven by "U Can't Touch This". One of my friends and I spent a long time with a walkman and headphones playing and rewinding Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em  on cassette in an attempt to decipher/memorize the lyrics. Of course, this was before the days of the internet which would have made it much easier but not nearly as much fun.

Not much else beyond the song "Pray" is still memorable today. (I still pull out the lyric "we got to pray just to make it today" on occasion.) But the album certainly had an influence on me at the time. I acquired all his albums and watched his performance at the 1991 Grammys a hundred times or so. As a high school freshman I was in a Home Economics class and we were assigned to do a sewing project. I decided to make a pair of baggy Hammer pants in a very loud print. And I think I even wore them to school a couple of times - the early 90s were very accepting like that.

My rap phase didn't last much past the release of Too Legit to Quit. By then, it was time to enjoy the R&B stylings of Color Me Badd and Boyz II Men. However, three years ago, our ward had to prepare a dance routine for a stake activity. I suggested..."U Can't Touch This", which resulted in a 41-year-old me learning to do things I'd never learned as a 14-year-old Hammer fan. That's influence.

Most Influential Albums: Day Four

While Slippery When Wet was their breakthrough, I was probably a little young for Bon Jovi when it was released. I first listened to New Jersey around 1991 when I signed up for Columbia House and trying new things was inconsequential because after all, it was only a penny! The sound of New Jersey resonated with me right away and was my introduction to "hair metal" although it was the early 90s and rock was moving into its grunge/alternative phase. It wasn't oversexed, it wasn't angry, it was almost positive. In the VH1 series I Love the 80s, Dee Snider commented about Jon Bon Jovi's penchant for smiling in his music videos, which was not really a characteristic of serious rockers.

Bon Jovi moved towards a more serious sound in 1992 with the release of Keep the Faith, and they moved back into the mainstream in 1994 with Cross Road. I didn't necessarily keep up on all their releases afterwards, but I finally saw them in concert five years ago. I still own New Jersey on both cassette and CD. I admit that a couple of the tracks on Slippery When Wet are better than anything you find on New Jersey, but New Jersey is a much better overall album. It's not just me - thirty years later, it still holds the record for most top 10 singles off of a hard rock album.