Bon Jovi Tickets : The Band Was Honored With The Award Of Merit At The American Music Awards

Bon Jovi is an American hard rock band from Sayreville, New Jersey. Formed in 1983, Bon Jovi consists of lead singer and namesake Jon Bon Jovi (John Francis Bongiovi, Jr.), guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres as well as current bassist Hugh McDonald.

The band's line-up has remained mostly static during their history, the only exception being the departure of Alec John Such in 1994, who was unofficially replaced by Hugh McDonald. The band became known for writing several rock anthems, and achieved widespread recognition with their third album Slippery When Wet, released in 1986.

After touring and recording non-stop during the late 1980s, the band went on hiatus after the New Jersey Tour in 1990, during which time Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora both released successful solo albums.

In 1992, the band returned with the album Keep the Faith. Their 2000 single "It's My Life", which followed a second hiatus, successfully introduced the band to a younger audience. Bon Jovi has been known to use different styles in their music, which has included country for their 2007 album Lost Highway. Their latest album, The Circle, was released on 10 November 2009 in the United States.

Throughout their career, the band have released eleven studio albums, three compilation albums and one live album, and have sold 130 million records worldwide. They have performed more than 2,600 concerts in over 50 countries for more than 34 million fans, and were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006. The band was also honored with the Award of Merit at the American Music Awards in 2004.

Bon Jovi had planned to release a greatest hits album in 2009, but the project got sidelined after the group came up with enough material for a brand new studio album, Jon commenting that "the state of the world at this point in time gave us a lot to write about". That doesn't mean the best-of set has been put on hold forever, Jon says "it will come out in 2010".

Along with a few never-before-released songs, the compilation will also feature tracks not featured on Bon Jovi's 1994 Cross Road greatest hits. "It'll be a new greatest hits because the last one was 15 years ago in '94.

So you had everything from These Days forward. And what is this my fifth album in this decade? So at least six studio records and a solo thing. And then I'm sure you'll still end up having to put 'Living On A Prayer' on it but there won't be 'Runaway' on it. It won't have the early early stuff because we'll have had more hits since then."

In July 2010 Bon Jovi posted pictures on their Facebook page from the photo shoot for the Greatest Hits album. The first single from the Greatest Hits, titled "What Do You Got?" was released on August 27, 2010.Bon Jovi's musical style has generally been characterized as 'Hard Rock', 'Pop or Hair Metal', 'Arena rock' and 'Pop rock', although they have also experimented and varied from these genres at times.

The band's first four albums blended the Pop metal and Hard rock genres, although they had mostly shed the Pop metal sound by their fifth studio album, Keep the Faith, and their sixth, These Days, utilizing a more mature hard rock sound. Crush was characterized as "far enough into pop/rock to actually stand a chance of getting airplay", while Bounce was described as "heavy, serious rock". Have a Nice Day was also characterized as being heavier than Crush.

The band altered their sound dramatically in their next release, Lost Highway, blending influences from Country music and Country rock, a sound Jon Bon Jovi described as "a Bon Jovi album influenced by Nashville". Bon Jovi returned to a more typical rock sound on The Circle, which was described by Allmusic as "conjured by echoed, delayed guitars, shimmering keyboards, and spacious rhythms."