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Here, Jon Bon Jovi doesn't mince words about his label, singing "After 30 years of loyalty, they let you dig the grave/Now maybe you can learn to sing or even strum along/Well I'll give you half the publishing, you're why I wrote this song," then delivering the coup de grace with the chorus: "Here's a last song you can sell/Let's call it Burning Bridges, it's a singalong as well.hope my money and my masters buy a front-row seat in hell." Not since Graham Parker snarled about "Mercury Poisoning" has a rocker not bothered with parting niceties to his benefactors, and the venom invigorates Jon Bon Jovi, allowing him to write a nagging melody that immediately hooks under the skin and revealing just what a slog the rest of this fare-thee-well actually is. Apart from "Fingerprints," which benefits from a hint of 12-strings from "Wanted Dead or Alive," these seven songs have no flair and virtually no melody, a pretty clear indication that Bon Jovi completed Burning Bridges out of a sense of obligation, not inspiration, but just in case you missed the point he lays it all out in the closing title song.
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Elsewhere, things are pretty turgid, as Bon Jovi tries in vain to splice Coldplay with Springsteen in an attempt to scale previously unheard heights in arena rock. Sambora gets a co-credit on "Saturday Night Gave Me Sunday Morning," a song dating back to The Circle that's easily one of the liveliest things here, rivaled by "I'm Your Man," which punches like it was left over from New Jersey. In a way, Burning Bridges clears the deck for a new incarnation of Bon Jovi, the first where guitarist Richie Sambora is no longer part of the equation. Labeled not as a new record but a "fan album," 2015's Burning Bridges contains, in Jon Bon Jovi's words, "songs that weren't finished, that were finished, a couple of new ones." Usually, this kind of hodgepodge is called a contractual obligation or a stopgap, but "fan album" not only sounds kinder, it also identifies precisely the audience that would be interested in this brief, power ballad-heavy collection. His collaborations run the gamut from Aerosmith to ZEDD, Bon Jovi to Ricky Martin, KISS to Kelly Clarkson, Cher to Katy Perry.