Bon Jovi's biggest SoundScan sellers

By Ken Barnes

Now that Bon Jovi reigns on the Billboard album chart again, just as if it were the late '80s, it seemed like a good time to make the band the next subject of the recurring series on SoundScan Era Best Sellers.

Bon Jovi's peak came in 1986, with the 12-times-platinum Slippery When Wet, and 1988, with New Jersey, which went septuple platinum. (Always wanted to use "septuple platinum" in a sentence. Now I have. What's left for me to achieve?) New Jersey doesn't make the top five SoundScan list (SoundScan started tabulating sales electronically in late 1991), but Slippery does.

But No. 1 is the 1994 album Cross Road, which has sold 4.2 million copies. Slippery finishes second, with 2.9 million (meaning, if its RIAA platinum numbers are close to reality, it sold more than 9 million in the pre-SoundScan era.

2000's Crush is No. 3, with 2.0 million, followed by 1992's Keep the Faith at 1.6 million and the most recent album before Lost Highway, 2005's Have a Nice Day, which has sold 1.4 million. We'll see if Highway can break into that select group.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/listenup/2007/06/bon-jovis-bigge.html?csp=34