Every huge artist has their "New Jersey" - a huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

I feel like with all these cult maybe-platinum-once-maybe people keep mentioning for no goddamn sensible reason there's no fucking New Jersey (obv you fuckin solipsistic schmindie fools) but there is that album that was clearly a commercial grab that maybe charted relatively high but it was clear by the follow up that a cult act was all they were ever gonna be: Paul Westerbergs Eventually, Jon Spencer's Acme, that kinda thing.

But Jesus anyone calling that a New Jersey needs to go lick richie samboras boot until they see the light

yeah you guys are missing the point of this thread: they gotta be followups to blockbusters.

just want to drop in and give thx to bon jovi for realising that new jersey is in fact their best album

I'm sure they thought that even at the time, since they probably had the biggest budget they'd ever had.

prism never felt like an event album to me although yes it was a followup to a blockbuster

jesus…. centipede hz might be a fairweather johnson
mr impossible by black dice is a fairweather johnson

Yeah Alfred OTM, why are people talking about Sonic Youth or the Flaming Lips or Animal Collective on this thread?

ilx quotas

There's also these artists whose popularity massively exceeds the extent to which people actually talk about them - I have no idea if there's a Michael Buble or Snow Patrol New Jersey.

The last undeniable New Jersey is probably the 20/20 Experience. Although I'm guessing that the One Direction one, when it appears, is going to be huge and pronounced.

I'd probably deny 2020 with a "too soon to tell" esp considering dude is in the top ten with a song off part 2 right now

And on the other hand despite the opening week boom the drop off single wise and album sales wise between future sex and 2020 part 1 is enough that New Jersey status may be too flattering.

Also hard to really say Part 2 is his Keep The Faith when its a year-later tack-on to the alleged NJ. Load works as a New Jersey becuz whether you say the follow up is reload, s&m or st anger doesn't matter. The career decline is there, no ambiguity about it.

Lol wait reload did 4x platinum anywaaaay I just think its silly to go there for newish albums, feels more like people making wishes than applying hindsight

Collapse of record sales generally over the same period also makes it hopeless to compare anything, unless we develop a statistic that denotes an album's sales divided by total album sales in all formats at that date, times some factor to keep it from being a tiny fraction or w/e.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYbEB7tQF80

THE ONLY ROCK ALBUM IN HISTORY WITH 5 TOP TEN HITS should have a "60s bands released multiple albums a year, jovi hawked one over two years, don't get it twisted" asterisk

the only *rock* album you'll note. there must have been tons more in other genres. weedy boast IMO.

"the only rock album in history with with 5 top ten hits"??? bon jovi might want to talk to a certain neighbor of theirs on the jersey shore about that.

also, obvi, the "5" should be spelled out and the "ten" should not. don't they teach ap style at rock school anymore?

also wait a goddamn minute doesn't born in the usa have like 7 top ten hits

lol xpost

Maybe they're sneaking by on the fact that Born in the USA had 7 top 10 hits. That's not 5! It's 7! Only New Jersey had 5.

tico torres was on some bullshit like "max played with a jazz grip on that album, it barely even counts as rock"

That Jovi's going with this claim only make me angrier that Def Leppard's "Rocket" only got to #12.

I hope Bon Jovi got real pedantic and used this logic to make this argument with someone.

an album that could have achieved this if the label had given a fuck about the honor re: single formatting - Jagged Little Pill

("Ironic," "You Oughta Know" and "You Learn" all went Top 10, "Hand In My Pocket" and "Head Over Feet" did well enough on related charts to suggest it was a technicality they didn't make the big one)

tico torres was on some bullshit like "max played with a jazz grip on that album, it barely even counts as rock"

― some dude, Wednesday, June 25, 2014 12:23 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahahahahaha

didn't the alanis record predate the whole dropping of the physical-single requirement for the hot 100

Maybe they're sneaking by on the fact that Born in the USA had 7 top 10 hits. That's not 5! It's 7! Only New Jersey had 5.

― intheblanks, Wednesday, 25 June 2014 12:22 (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hope Bon Jovi got real pedantic and used this logic to make this argument with someone.

― intheblanks, Wednesday, 25 June 2014 12:24 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol, well, if we're being pedantic, Born in the USA did have five top 10 hits; it just had an additional two. Someone could conceivably debate whether it really counts as a rock album (given that e.g. Thriller obv doesn't count) but I don't know if Bon Jovi is that someone.

yup, re alanis. "hand" and "head" went to #4 and #1 respectively on the "mainstream Top 40" chart

but man, even if we accept the technicality, bon forgetting about bruce is hysterical

I could see someone associated with the Jovi organization, or JovCorp, arguing that BITUSA doesn't count because there's no loud guitars on "Dancing in the Dark" or "My Hometown."

apparently huey lewis and the news' album "fore!" also had five top 10s. as did "invisible touch" by genesis. in fact the latter had five top 5 hits.

yeah but those guys aren't REAL rock and roll, they've got a lot of synths and...oh wait

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Pv9JXDdJSQI/TwEk6ocfR2I/AAAAAAAAAXc/nk2D_vkplNM/s1600/Bon%252BJovi%252BPerforms%252BNBC%252Bs%252BToday%252BG2YcCVM9mW-l.jpg

Pretty clear that they didn't actually fact check this assertion at all. I hope it's just something that's been accepted as true in the Bon Jovi camp for the past 25 years.

whoever came up with that claim was totally trolling people in this thread

i mean way to make your huge event album feel a bit hollow, bon jovi

Some think the verses have an eerily and uncredited similarity (both musically and melodically) to John Lennon's Beatles' track "Don't Let Me Down" (recorded during the Get Back sessions) and the chorus was claimed, by some fans of the late 1980s hard rock genre, to have been culled from an unreleased song by Joel Ellis of Cats in Boots and Heavy Bones.[2][3] Ellis has said that Lehua Reid (Richie Sambora's ex-fiancée) regaled him with anecdotes regarding Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora "sitting at the piano for hours with a box full of tapes they got from people and going through the songs looking for stuff they could rip off and laughing about it, your [Ellis'] song was played over and over and over."[3]

haha hard working plagiarists, sitting at a piano for hours trying not to create anything original

then laughing about it

lolling at this entire discussion

Here is the full list of top ten singles from one album:

7
Michael Jackson / Thriller
Bruce Springsteen / Born in the U.S.A.
Janet Jackson / Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814
Michael Jackson / Bad

6
George Michael / Faith
Janet Jackson / Janet
Katy Perry / Teenage Dream

5
Paula Abdul / Forever Your Girl
Milli Vanilli / Girl You Know It's True
Madonna / True Blue
Fergie / The Dutchess
Genesis / Invisible Touch
Whitney Houston / Whitney
Janet Jackson / Control
New Kids on the Block / Hangin' Tough
Lionel Richie / Can't Slow Down
Black Eyed Peas / The END
Huey Lewis & the News / Fore!
Bon Jovi / New Jersey
Bobby Brown / Don't Be Cruel

dots and loops - stereolab

1989

yes, sadly

*walks in*

*walks out, slams door*

absolutely 1989. completely irredeemable record ("shake it off" is okay, but not redemptively okay).

weezer don't have a career trajectory that quite fits the model but Make Believe is otherwise a clear NJ. all-time biggest commercial/mainstream resonance for them, but one of those CDs that infested used sections a few months after release. marked an irreversible drop-off for them both commercially and critically, too (per p4k's pans people tend to forget it but green and maladroit were actually quite well received upon release).

green album was huge when I was in hs

While it was a comeback from Maladroit, Make Believe sold less than the green album and less than half what the blue album, so "all-time biggest commercial/mainstream resonance" seems pretty debatable. Weezer was gold-level rock act that could go platinum with a hit single, and Make Believe was the last time they had one.

So ok in this revive we've got "album from indie act that was laughably nowhere near event status," "extremely popular new album some posters think is poopie and pray is the beginning of the end but can't wait to find out" and "album where someone clearly didn't check the sales figures before making their claims" i forget is there any other offering to NJ-hood that makes me pedantic and huffy we haven't seen yet?

a good metaphor would be that part of a roadrunner cartoon where wile e coyote has run off the cliff and hasn't realized it yet, so by definition it can't be a commercial comeback album. make believe may have felt a bit hollow to critics and to you and me but it's not like "dope nose" and "keep fishin" have proven more enduring than "beverly hills" and "perfect situation".

yeah I see no sign that in 2018 we'll look at 1989 and think, "Wow, here's when we knew the next album was going to be Keep the Faith."