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

Hello Nasty maybe. It was an event given it had been 4 years since Ill Commuincation. 3x platinum, one huge hit ("Intergalactic"), pretty blah record.

well, the huge hit was their first Top 40 hit since 1987 and the album sales matched Ill Communication's.

"Sabotage" didn't hit top 40, wow, seemed huge at the time.

yeah, I would guess that "Sabotage" is a more known and loved song than "Intergalactic" is.

Definitive post on Be Here Now:

so instead of studying for a test i'm trying to come up with TIERS

the New Jersey: a huge event album that's massive by all reasonable standards but is shadowed by the album(s) that ironically are the only reason it was massive, since it was pretty damn shallow on its own merits (i.e. New Jersey, Spellbound, For Those About To Rock, Spirits Having Flown, Afterburner, Fore!, Be Here Now in the UK)

the Fairweather Johnson: a huge event album that still sells better than it should've thanks to the band's previous success, but one could almost immediately sense fortunes going considerably southward even if one was a fan (i.e. Fairweather Johnson, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, Nine Lives, Be Here Now in the US)

― da croupier, Wednesday, 8 August 2012 23:25 (2 years ago) Permalink

not even "smells like teen spirit" hit top 40 y'all

It was a top 10

Peaked at #6 to be exact

A Nevermind is a second album that most people think is a first album

ha, it's def a thing

Can see the argument for hello nasty, though I'm not sure I've seen much evidence it's considered a "blah record" in hindsight any more than ill communication, or that "intergalactic" has gone down in esteem either

a Dookie is a third album that most people think is a first album

Beastie Boys imo are a total album centric act since 1989...any individual single success seems incidental of trends

MC Hammer - Too Legit To Quit

Beasties are weird, dunno about Hello Nasty being in this company. I think it's probably still seen as being about as good as people saw it at the time: "hey, this is a fun record if you like this kind of thing, pretty obvious which are the highlight tracks, probably too long." Not sure many people who dug it then think it sucks now. I get the logic behind putting it here: it's at least borderline "event," insofar as their back catalog was riding high on the radio and they were really visible at that moment (Tibet, popular new videos, etc.) in a way they never would be again.

The long gaps between albums also probably change the "feel" of records. Beasties maybe dodged some of that weight for Hello Nasty as "event" by having jokey videos and a silly cover...it's like how nobody really thinks it's that big a deal that there's a new Weird Al album even though they tend to actually be pretty far apart. We've never really waded into whether New Jerseys have any relation to absolute chronology, though with Boston and Metallica we've brushed around the edges I think. (Not sure anybody ever submitted Load as a New Jersey but in a way it makes more sense than anything else.)

Actually though, to me, almost all the viable New Jerseys were the extension of a continuous period of the act being on the charts and on the radio. Not just because that makes it more likely that there's momentum for the New Jersey to use building up its (doomed) snowball, but also because it contributes to the "feel" of bigness and excitement, and it has to feel that big for the absence of bigness to be noteworthy later. So while a big comeback from a long-absent group (a Third Stage) is obviously an Event and a Big Deal, that may not really be that crucial here. In Boston's case, the smoking gun New Jersey evidence is going four times platinum in like a year, with three hit singles that you never hear anymore.

For a long time, I've felt like the New Jersey was basically a historical phenomenon that couldn't happen again; see my earlier posts about it being fundamentally a product of post-Thriller marketing cycles and strategies: an album every 2-3 years, heavy with potential singles that you try to milk for almost all of that period, keeping excitement up for tour dates etc. A lot of the biggest artists now have stuff coming out so continuously (singles and featured credits), which adds to the post-CD sense that the dropping of the "album" isn't really so much of an event. On the other hand, something like Teenage Dream (single releases from May 2010 to October 2011) (not counting the reissue) suggests that really extended marketing around a record isn't entirely dead, it just may be down to a very few top-drawer hitmakers. If I could be convinced that Prism felt like an event (or if people even noticed that there was a new album and not just some more new Katy Perry stuff on the radio, like there always is), then it would at least be possible to someday look back on it and recognize a New Jersey, allowing for some River Of MySpace math. Though it was Gaga who led us down this path in the first place, I doubt this will ever seem quite apt for Born This Way.

Don Caballero - American Don

@da croupier: this is super weird. i see what you see now, but i was just rereading Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic, and he goes on and on in it about how SLTS peaked at 41 on Billboard (his point not being that it wasn't actually a huge hit, but that it was mostly for MTV/not for any big radio impact). he wrote the book in '95 and revised it much later. not sure how he could both botch a stat so thoroughly and neglect to correct it.

(btw R&TPN is a much more prejudiced and nasty read than i remembered it as a teenager. still full of great insights but this factual gaffe is disconcerting)

Don Caballero - American Don

― Master of Treacle, Sunday, January 11, 2015 12:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a New Jersey cannot be an art rock masterpiece

lol i was up late last night and saw spazz mention dots and loops ... i knew da croupier would be riled up.

this thread rules.

Incredible how Carducci can make this mistake. Mucb of Nevermind's narrative depends on knocking Thriller from #1 and SLTS hitting top ten.

Don Caballero - American Don

― Master of Treacle,

how many weeks was this in the top ten

At the end of the day, I'm not sure New Jersey is actually a worse album than Slippery When Wet tbh.

Going to listen to "Born to Be My Baby" now.

I still rep for "I'll be there for you"

Re cardiucci, I totally want to read that book but am not surprised he could get some stats very very wrong

I will rep for Blood on Blood

We never did determine if Elvis Costello had a New Jersey, but http://youtu.be/jNsgOhIcqNQ

If you're reading Rock and the Pop Narcotic for pop chart stats...

"EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW" AKA the UK version

Backing up, to say Weezer Make Believe was an event album is really wrong, looks like it's not even multiplatinum, American Idiot is from the year before, did 15M sales, spawned a Broadway musical, and rewrote Green Days critical/establishment cred to the point they got in the Hall of Fame

hahahaha holy fuck

ilxor...

Dire Straits?

On Every Street did go platinum in the US (& sold 10 million worldwide) but I don't remember it being an event record. It felt like Dire Straits had been gone for too long.

It also came out about two weeks before Nevermind

iirc, Knopfler confidently and repeatedly proclaimed at the time that OES would be the biggest-selling album of all time.

that's his own affair

I certainly remember a LOT of coverage in non music media (tabloids/tv) but i swear i cant remember any of the singles

I remember "Calling Elvis" and "Heavy Fuel" getting tons of AOR airplay, though apparently neither of them charted. I also remember despising both songs.

wiki says Calling Elvis only got to #21 but I think it got a lot of airplay as i listened on youtube and actually remember it

(UK)

CAS was their final album so I guess the game was really up

beasties have no new jersey
these five words i swear to you

I had to google fairweather johnson. Hootie had zero impact over here. Like DMB i wouldnt even know who they were if it wasnt for the internet

I wish I could say that

I guess they don't have khaki low profile baseball hats in the UK though

where is this magical place you speak of

you guys didnt get ocean colour scene, stereophonics and other britpop shit that we all hate and you guys wonder who we are talking about.
nu metal otoh did cross here

xp
the UK

the land where kula shaker had hits.

OCS and Stereophonics were big enough to be on my radar even as a landlocked yank; didn't care for either though

now Mansun -- that was a band