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

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.

kanye breaks the mold but drake i think fits very comfortably into it, like lady gaga

yeah called it for views from the 6, I would argue that for Kanye it was Twisted Fantasy

While it's true that for people less than 25 years old MBDTF is the preferred album, they don't care about singles.

Does anyone else recall the excellent thread in which we sought various bands' equivalent of Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie? That was a high quality thread.

Geez, it seems (upon searching in earnest) that that was this very thread. Sorry, carry on.

wait, what was drake's peak? i could never make it through an entire album.

Just searched the thread to see if this had come up:

Here's one: Nelly - Sweat/Suit

― The Reverend, Thursday, August 16, 2012 6:46 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lmao some dude sorry my theory doesn't stand up to rigorous scientific analysis

Here's one that doesn't seem to have been mentioned: Stone Temple Pilots' "Purple." It's 6x platinum, and had several hit singles ("Big Empty," "Interstate Love Song," "Vasoline"), but all of the songs most people remember are on "Core" (8x platinum). And then "Tiny Music" was only 2x platinum.

Those STP songs from Purple are still pretty well-remembered.

more likely to hear those songs on the radio than "wicked garden" at this point imo

Ha, OK, maybe *I* just don't remember them as well!

yeah those songs got/get massive airplay

Interstate is probably their most beloved song