Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of 1987: Bon Jovi

(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why Bon Jovi was our Greatest Pop Star of 1987 — with our ’87 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)

Hair metal, glam rock, pop metal — whatever you want to call it, the big hooks and big hair that dominated hard rock in the Reagan years reached its apex in 1987. Guns N’ Roses and Def Leppard released career-defining albums, Aerosmith staged a major comeback, and Motley Crue went multi-platinum. But nobody ruled the charts like Bon Jovi, whose 1986 album Slippery When Wet spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and topped the year-end chart for 1987, while the single “Livin’ on a Prayer” was the year’s longest-reigning Hot 100 chart-topper.

If any rock frontman was ever going to be crowned the biggest pop star of his time, it’s the man born John Bongiovi. Although he changed his name to a snappier phonetic spelling, the kid from New Jersey had everything else going for him from day one: a movie-star smile, a big voice, and a cousin, Tony Bongiovi, who owned the New York studio The Power Station and let him record demos after hours.

Unlike other hair metal heroes who moved to L.A. to make it on the Sunset Strip, Jon Bon Jovi kickstarted his career on his home turf, like his Jersey idol Bruce Springsteen. Recording his first hit, 1984’s “Runaway” — with a lineup of session musicians that included E Street Band keyboardist Roy Bittan and eventual longtime JBJ sideman guitarist Richie Sambora — Bon Jovi got the song on local radio, signed a record deal, and formed his eponymous band. But their momentum stalled when their second album failed to yield another hit as big as “Runaway.” Bon Jovi’s third album became their make-or-break moment, much as Born to Run had been for Springsteen.

The group enlisted the help of veteran songwriter Desmond Child, who’d helped Kiss capitalize on disco with 1979’s “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” and was already an expert at merging hard rock with pop hooks. The four songs he co-wrote on Slippery When Wet, including its first two singles, were just what Bon Jovi needed. The album debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 45 after its August release, just below where the band’s first two albums had peaked. But within six weeks, the album had steadily risen to No. 1, and a few weeks later “You Give Love a Bad Name” topped the Hot 100. Then stadium singalong anthem “Livin’ on a Prayer” came out, becoming the group’s second consecutive No. 1 in February — by which point Slippery had already returned to the top of the charts, staying there for seven weeks. 

Jon Bon Jovi was a clean cut prom king compared to, say, the sleazier likes of Motley Crue or Guns N’ Roses. But Bon Jovi bucked the hair metal formula in one way: they didn’t need a power ballad to take their career to the next level. Both of the album’s No. 1 singles were fist-pumping anthems, and the third top 10 hit, “Wanted Dead or Alive,” rocked even harder at a slightly slower tempo. Burnt out by the whirlwind tour in support of the album, Bon Jovi never shot a video for the lighter-waving “Never Say Goodbye,” which was released as the album’s fourth single only in certain territories outside the U.S. (The videos for the album’s first three singles — largely tour-shot affairs, helmed by MTV fixture Wayne Isham, featuring the band as larger-than-life live phenoms — were among the channel’s most unavoidable clips of the era.)

At a time when the biggest pop singers were releasing six or seven singles from each album, Bon Jovi bested them with a simple campaign of three songs and three videos. They’d repeat their success with 1988’s New Jersey, another No. 1 album with two No. 1 singles, and continue a steady stream of chart-topping albums and arena tours for the next three decades. But the trio of hits from Slippery When Wet so perfectly encapsulated Bon Jovi’s sound and image that they’ve never been eclipsed as the band’s lasting legacy.

Honorable Mention: Michael Jackson (Bad, “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel”), U2 (The Joshua Tree, “With Or Without You,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”), Whitney Houston (Whitney, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All”)

Rookie of the Year: Debbie Gibson

Debbie Gibson had been writing her own songs for years before she caught the attention of Atlantic Records and released her debut album Out of the Blue two weeks before her 17th birthday. The pop prodigy soon became a teen sensation, and a more wholesome rival to Madonna, with debut LP Out of the Blue spawning the top 5 singles “Only In My Dreams” and “Shake Your Love.” The chart-topping torch song “Foolish Beat” followed the next year, earning Gibson Guinness recognition as the youngest artist to write, produce and perform a No. 1 single.

Comeback of the Year: Herb Alpert

Herb Alpert had top 5 hits in three different decades, each time with a radically different sound: In 1968, the Tijuana Brass trumpeter hit No. 1 crooning the Bacharach and David song “This Guy’s in Love with You,” and he topped the Hot 100 again in 1979 with the funky instrumental “Rise.” In 1987, he scored yet another comeback with the No. 5-peaking dance-pop smash “Diamonds,” and its top 40 ballad follow-up “Making Love in the Rain” — both produced by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, with vocals by Janet Jackson and Lisa Keith.  

(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 1988 here, or head back to the full list here.)