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

the trick is to ignore the 1st 4 tracks AND the final 4 which don't really count anyway. it's one of the worst sequenced albums ever.

yeah songs in the key is still stevie's canonical classic in a lot of senses, critically hailed career artists like stevie and bruce and prince can avoid an outright new jersey more easily than those who don't have that kind of cultural credibility. tunnel love fulfills a lot of commercial requirements but if you think it "feels a bit hollow" i'd say YOU feel a bit hollow, my good sir.

tunnel of love, i mean

think live 75-85 is closer to bruce's new jersey

haha woah, even with the fact that a 5cd box only has to drop 2m copies to go diamond, i was taken aback by how much that's sold. still don't think he has one (in that tunnel of love would have to be the keep the faith) but i agree that box is closer to being one

was just thinking it reminded me of spirits having flown where the album was a hit and had hit songs but still managed to be a big sales disappointment, retail complaint about overstock.

that's closer to the Tusk Clause.

if you were to have a what artists have a huge event album following a big selling album but sells far less BUT is far more loved critically what else would there be apart from In Utero ?
Actually save your answers for a thread on it

What acts have had a huge selling album and the follow up sells far less yet is critically favoured by fans and music critics?

the trick is to ignore the 1st 4 tracks AND the final 4 which don't really count anyway. it's one of the worst sequenced albums ever.

― piscesx, Saturday, September 5, 2015 2:53 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always thought the record was front-loaded, if anything.

Then I saw him do it live last year. I hadn't listened to the album in years (like Al, it's my least favorite of his classic era), and after "I Wish" I thought, ok, probably nap time now. WRONG. Songs I remembered as duds were impossibly thrilling. Maybe it was just a you-had-to-be-there thing, but it made me seriously revise my opinion of the album.

Of the stevie albums I have its def my least favourite

y'all are mad

SITKOL is hugely acclaimed and beloved. def his most popular album.

Yeah this is nuts, he just this year toured stadiums playing the album!

if you google stevie wonder albums, SITKOL comes up first as "most popular"

did everyone see where i admitted i was basically thinking of one ILX post from a decade ago that merely made me think my sense that it was beloved was mistaken?

parse fail.. Parse fail...

haha I knew that was a horrendous sentence as I was typing it

I can't recall if we ever mentioned Carnival Ride by Carrie Underwood. Her debut Some Hearts was 7x platinum, the biggest selling country record of the 00s, and the follow up had one of the biggest first weeks of the decade, but the singles, especially "Last Name" sure felt hollow. It sold 3 million. Next album 2 million. Fourth album less than that.

25, calling this in advance

the bets start now

It seems highly likely, so good call.

ha yeah, good shout. is/was there a stipulation that the first single off a New Jersey is a smash? cause if so..

"Bad Medicine," "Stuck With You," et al hit #1

Yeah good call, one because there are so few releases that even feel like "events" anymore and I knew she was big but I didn't know the Internet would go nuts for 24 hours about a new Adele

Adele's last album was one of those absurd once-in-a-generation runaway success stories that nobody can really hope to repeat. i mean, i'm sure somebody thought Bad was going to somehow outsell Thriller, but once the bar's been set high, it's practically impossible to reach it again. i guess in a decade we'll be able to say if she had a swift, dramatic Alanis-like drop in commercial prominence or a gradual Alicia Keys-like one, but either way, it's pretty hard to sustain that magnitude of success. then again, someone upthread pointed out that Taylor Swift's Speak Now felt a little like a New Jersey, and it really did at the time, but that whole career decline thing sure didn't happen afterwards.

streaming seems like such a larger part of the marketplace than when 21 came out also, it's very easy to imagine 25 to be in some ways as successful as 21 while not approaching those sales numbers (which no other album in that span has really approached anyway)(i could be wrong there and if i am i'm just gonna guess that i forgot about frozen)

yeah i mean...everybody could sour on "Hello" in a couple weeks and hate every other song, and it would still very likely end up being the 2nd-highest selling album of the decade (after 21) just off of preorders and Christmas gifts. streaming has definitely cut into sales now, although it's hard to tell right now whether Billboard's 'album-equivalent units' will end up being the number people refer to by default in the future.

Kind of wondering if Ashanti's Chapter 2 counts as this

Meh, on 2nd thought, Concrete Rose did almost as well; I just dont think I can remember any solo Ashanti songs tbh

views from the six

god I hope so

so otm

don't think so im afraid

i literally heard some 20 year olds raving about it/him this morning as i bought coffee

and that anecdote can clearly be extrapolated to all 20 year olds everywhere writ large

So "Hotline Bling" is "You Could Be Mine" to Views' Use Your Illusion.

no, "Hotline Bling" is definitely his signature song...

yeah it has probably supplanted "The Motto" or whatever as the centerpiece of the Drake segment of I Love The 2010s

does it really count as a part of the album though. it's tacked on at the end & existed for a full year prior right

yea it def doesn't. it's a bonus track. views is definitely his new jersey

Probably can add Life of Pablo to this

^what i was thinking

idk i think a lot of people are stanning for Pablo as AOTY

MBDTF was already kanye's new jersey, notwithstanding the brief uptick that was the first half of yeezus

except that like everyone under the age of 22 thinks MBDTF is one of the greatest albums of all time (wtf right??)

one problem (of many) with the "every huge artist has a New Jersey" theory is that some artists are taken more seriously after their commercial peak than Bon fucking Jovi

I don't trust myself on predicting Drake decline anymore, figured NWTS was gonna be the cultural high-water mark

idk i think a lot of people are stanning for Pablo as AOTY

― flappy bird, Friday, May 13, 2016 2:53 PM

he's like Elvis Costello in the '80s: lots of people will think a new album is his latest masterpiece.

And even New Jersey did not immediately present itself as a New Jersey.