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

Just heard new Bon Jovi on top forty. Apparently the album is his quid-ag soul-searcher:

Lyrics on the album talk about difficulties Jon came across over 2014-2015. Jon explained: "A lot happened. Richie's sudden departure, my trying to buy the (Buffalo) Bills and now this with the label. I have a lot of material to write about. Believe me, the new record is good. It's pointed. It is something we are going to be very proud of in the spring when we put it out."(5)

Once upon a time not so long ago, Tommy used to work on the docks...

And I hear I thought someone was prematurely going to call Blonde a New Jersey.

Sorry if this was covered above, but is the era of New Jerseys over? Was it sort of dependent on the culture of months-long hype followed by lines at record stores on release day?

My contention has always been that they fall between Thriller and Napster:

also, i wonder this gets a bit at raffles's question of why this seems like a late 80s/early 90s thing - - - I think to have a New Jersey you have to be in that post-Thriller, pre-download age when marketing was album-oriented and there was a general tendency to milk singles out of a record for a long while, so that you could rack up these like 5-6 single runs from albums that ultimately people didn't care that much about, and meanwhile even as the album's life cycle was playing out, the band's position in pop's hierarchy was slipping, or radio formats were shifting out from under them, not completely but enough that the album never built up a longer-term base.

For a long time, I've felt like the New Jersey was basically a historical phenomenon that couldn't happen again (...) 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.

One thing I'd add to that might be the centrality of MTV in that same era, and its capacity to add tremendous aura to a band and its releases without any of it being siphoned off, diluted or undermined by the endless day-to-day update cycle of the Internet. Building up to, promoting, and delivering an "event" release surely made more sense under those conditions.

sound analysis. Yeah I think there are a lot of factors making it hard to create that kind of event release in this market, including the lack of record stores for people to line up at, a more diffuse musical audience by taste/style, lower overall record sales, extensive leaking, the ability to legally stream brand new albums etc. Of course I'm a few years from 40 and no longer in the demographic that would get really excited about such things, whereas I remember as a kid the event of Use Your Illusions I/II just loomed monumental even though I wasn't even the biggest GnR fan. It was more the fact that I hung out at Arnold's Disc Shop a lot, my friends were talking about it, I had only recently gotten MTV, I was pushing puberty, etc.

So I basically have no idea how teenagers are relating to new releases.

Carl Wilson in a Frank O. essay:

Drake’s long-anticipated Views dispensed a fistful of hits, but in its sprawl and bagginess the whole fell flat as the career-topping statement that had been expected.

i remember distinctly driving 1 hour to a musicland that was in another town to buy Use Your Illusion I & II on a midnight sale but in the car we were listening to nothing's shocking by jane's addiction cassette, the times were changin

the thing about new jerseys is often they're really bombastic and over the top, too. like in terms of sheer in-your-faceness. i'm thinking about 'bad medicine', 'let's get rocked', 'november rain', etc. and people get psyched about the size of that damn thing and what's missing out of all of those songs imo and a lot of similar kickoff singles from similar albums is the quality control.

that's probably been stated before in this thread.

Peter Gabriel's Us, maybe? Event album, reached similar chart positions as beloved predecessor So, included two hit singles including "Steam" which seemed an obvious knockoff of "Sledgehammer". But when did you last hear anything from Us? Probably not since something from the first four albums which were all lesser hits, and certainly not since the last few times you heard "In Your Eyes" from So.

I still think Bad is more of a New Jersey than Dangerous. With hindsight it's a pretty major fall-off songwise, though it's still a good record, and every one of his albums from then on sold less than the one before it no matter what kind of bullshit sales figures CBS tried to hype to the global news media. True, Dangerous was a worldwide smash and a much better record than Bad - which, again, it didn't outsell. But I feel like by that point, two years before the first sex abuse allegations, the writing was already pretty firmly on the wall that he would never top Thriller.

I'd still be interested to hear from non-American ILXors about their own experiences of Jackson's ubiquity/career trajectory/public image though - from what I understand MJ's commercial decline set in a lot earlier Stateside than in most of the rest of the world.

yeah -- MJ was massive in mid '90s England.

Yep, also on the European mainland, at least until '96/'97. Remember the Scream video getting massive airplay on MTV Europe, and that was after Dangerous if I'm correct (not a big MJ-fan).

yeah, I recall the Ghost video premiere being quite a thing (but I was v young and impressionable), my younger brother got it on vhs for christmas iirc

by Dangerous and the years after, over here the 'tabloid' MJ image had overtaken the musician in a way it didn't in the States. over there it semed the 'allegations' did the damage, over here it was more the pretending-to-be-Jesus onstage at the Brits and the fake-marriage and his nose falling off and all that rubbish. the tunes didn't help none mind, Bad had its moments and i loved it as a kid but i thought Dangerous sucked then and i still do. his NJ was definitely Dangerous i'd say not Bad.

Dangerous is easily his third best record. I loved 1995's "Stranger in Moscow." Even in 1997 he was still knocking out masterpieces of bat shit insanity like "Morphine."

"remember the time" def a top three mj song

Yeah, I've never liked Dangerous much (and I was a huge MJ fanboy since the early 80s !) but after reading the quite good 33 1/3 book lately, I've listened to it a lot for the first time since its release and reevaluated it : it's actually good (and even more if you consider it as a double album, which in many ways, it is). Far from OtW and Thriller obviously but at least comparable to Bad. I think for many (younger) people, Dangerous is clearly one of the classics.

"Who is it" is also up there with his best work.

I was about to say that whatever other sins you want to lay at its feet, Dangerous has "Who Is It" and "Remember the Time" on it and that forgives a lot in my book (nb, I do love most of the rest of the album)

the memories that these records all flood me with remind me just how easy it is to get an 11-year-old excited about something. I mean Dangerous, UYI I & II, New Jersey, these all loom huge in my childhood and yet true to the thread title I can't say I love any of them.

I had a lot of questions for my parents after the Leave Me Alone video.

Oh wait lol that was on Bad. durr

I've always dug "Who Is It," and have honestly come around on Dangerous a bit since this thread's heyday. It absolutely earned its second-place finish in the NJ poll, but there is a pretty decent quantity of good material there. If it were cut down to single-LP length (more by trimming the excesses of each over-long track than by cutting songs outright I think) it could have been a very tight slab of turn-of-the-90s dance-pop - but then it wouldn't be Dangerous, the soundtrack of a paranoid and overexposed star disappearing into the camouflage of glitz, tics, and production promised the cover. It's more memorable and special as a New Jersey than it would be as Bad II. *drops mic; it digitally morphs into a glass and breaks*

You wouldn't even need to cut down the length of the songs or some entire songs or even re-organize the tracklist, I think.
I find that if you consider it as a double album with disc 1 ending after "Heal the World" and start disc 2 with "Black or White" (minus the terrible intro), it works pretty well.

Now looking at wiki I realize the history of Leave Me Alone is complicated and that's probably why I mentally placed it on Dangerous. Didn't come out as a single until 89 and video won a grammy in 1990.

I find that if you consider it as a double album with disc 1 ending after "Heal the World" and start disc 2 with "Black or White"

Indeed, this is exactly how the 1991 vinyl release was formatted.

really ? it seems to me it was a bonus track on Bad from the start.

weirder still it wasn't even ON the vinyl and tape copies! is it the biggest ever 'extra track'? in fact is it the only ever *single* that was originally just an extra/bonus track used to flog CDs?

Would have to make a pretty big exception for "new songs on greatest hits albums," about which I'm certain there's a thread...

Indeed, this is exactly how the 1991 vinyl release was formatted.

eheh, I didn't know that (since I only had the CD) !
that way, disc 1 is more "urban" and hard and disc 2 is more introspective and dark. I prefer disc 2, actually.

just looking at the 'Bad' wiki, i'd forgotten that Another Part Of Me was originally part of the Captain Eo soundtrack!

Ah okay, I had the cassette version and I don't remember hearing it before the big *event* premier of the video, so that makes sense. xp

Captain Eo !! totally forgot about that (I don't even think I have seen it...) !
What else is on the soundtrack (I guess I should check that myself...) ?

and "another part of me" is one of my favourite tracks on Bad.
actually, all these are classics for me :

The Way You Make Me Feel
Liberian Girl
Another Part of Me
Man in the Mirror
Smooth Criminal

I even like "Just Good Friends" ! because it's the only fun and light song on the album (something that almost totally disappeared from his music after Thriller, sadly...).

the only other Eo song was uh We Are Here To Change The World. no me either. Captain Eo was the first collaboration between George Lucas and Coppola since THX it says.

i think 'bad' has too many classics still in regular rotation for it to be a NJ.

Pat Benatar is tricky. Tropico would seem like the obvious answer, with her biggest hit, We Belong. But in truth her NJ would have to be Live From Earth. It contained Love Is a Battlefield, which was her last big hard rock hit.

I don't think anyone in 1983 thought Pat Benatar's hit making days were over. Far from it.

That's what distinguishes NJs from the rest: the audience knows the artist is treading water.

"Love is a Battlefield" was her first top five!

Live from Earth was the beginning of the end of the Pat Benatar golden age. She had a couple big hits afterwards, but no blockbuster albums.

I agree, but no one thought so in 1983.

incidentally, the main impact of this whole discussion for me is having "Bad Medicine" stuck in my head, also i am convinced that Bon Jovi's best hits are the ones where I can mis-hear some element of the chorus as being about Batman, as in "Your love is like Batman is in" and of course "Shot through the heart, and you're to blame / You can't run...from Bat-Man."

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:01 PM (48 minutes ago)

I just got "Your love is like Al Sotosyn" stuck in my head.

and very good love it is too

lol

"That's what distinguishes NJs from the rest: the audience knows the artist is treading water."

Views.

Starboy and 24K Magic are also looking potentially New Jersey-ish at this point.

Regarding "Views" does the audience (or anybody) think Drake's hit making days are over ?
I wouldn't be surprised at all if Drake had more big hits/albums in the coming years...

a new jersey doesn't mean there's no more hits or big albums