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

i love this whole bonkers thread but sometimes it feels like people are trying to play the parlor game with their favorite acts rather than noting those who may have subsequently occupied a similar cultural space as Bon Jovi did in the late 80s, as much as that's possible

like i just opened the whole thread and ctrl+F'd for Maroon 5 and got nothing. i don't know their discography outside songs for jane and a couple of the later singles but they def feel like a band who have a New Jersey, probably from right around the time levine started cashing checks from work outside the band. i dunno, maybe i'm wrong. does lenny kravitz have a NJ? he hasn't been mentioned either. michael bolton? red hot chili peppers have been mentioned twice (by the way was nominated both times)--90s and later they've always felt like a kind of la version of BJ to me.

the prince discussion feels especially intangible since lovesexy dropped only four months before NJ itself... you can directly compare them in almost every particular if you want, no need for the kind of speculation that surrounds later acts who find themselves in changed circumstances

Can an entire genre have a New Jersey? If so, I nominate Tha Dogg Pound’s Dogg Food for gangsta rap. That album reached #1?

*barely audible* if by the way counts then that is a new jersey that i think is legit very good

does anyone on ILX know maroon 5's discography enough to comment? the main thing i know about them is that they are terrible. i guess they must have fans and an identity but, despite levine's ubiquity, they've always struck me as truly faceless, almost incapable of being "huge" no matter how many albums they sell or how many TV shows their frontman hosts. still, numbers-wise they might make it to hugeness....

trying to parse them just on quantitative measures it's tough to me to say they have one. despite earlier successes their greatest moment of pop-culture ubiquity was from 2010 to 2012 - "Misery," "Moves Like Jagger," "Payphone," "Daylight," the forgotten #1 "One More Night," and Levine's turn on "Stereo Hearts." but in terms of album sales, their 2010 and 2012 albums did considerably worse than their previous releases, and not measurably better than the two since, which have continued spinning out top 20 singles, none of which i can recall from the titles. obviously this is a reflection of the era - in 2000, with singles performing like that, they'd be looking at like 6x platinum album sales or more. were any of these albums really marketed as albums (let alone as "events")? i honestly have no idea.

Maroon 5 has got to be the most popular band that gets absolutely zero attention from ILM. They aren’t even interesting enough to be bad and hated like Dave Matthews.

if Lenny Kravitz has one it'd have to be 5 based on sales/pop cultural presence, sense of hollowness, and complete tanking of his recording career in subsequent years. but its event-ness is hard to appraise - it was a slow seller that gained momentum as increasingly bad but hooky singles got dug up, or added on to it. it was definitely not an event when "If You Can't Say No" first hit radio... "Are You Gonna Go My Way?" was still getting recurrent play but aside from that he was not arriving to that album with any star presence or anything. he's enough of a household name that i kinda buy him as a "huge artist" but....

First of all, the singles from Songs About Jane are good.

Secondly, what is a Fairweather Johnson? I forgot. I know it's Hootie. I think Maroon 5 have that or an NJ with It Won't Be Soon Before Long. Went 2x platinum in America, peaked at #21 on the Top 200. Songs About Jane peaked at #15 and went 4x platinum. The singles from the first record got a TON of radio and airplay in 2002 when MTV was still playing videos semi-regularly or at least enough to break a band. Constant rotation. I still hear those singles out today. Can't remember anything from the second record, released in 2007. Too much of a gap? Eh, the singles from Jane had legs. They toured on that record for years. I don't remember much excitement in 2007 - sort of feels like Maroon 5 records just happen, you don't anticipate them. But it wasn't the death knell.

The next album Hands All Over came out in 2010 and doesn't make much impact... until the fourth single - "Moves Like Jagger" - became a surprise hit nearly a year later, and arguably became more popular than any of the Jane singles. At this point, they can kind of just exist at that Starbucks wine mom plateau forever as long as Levine stays on TV and out of trouble.

ok I see now that the third paragraph completely negates the second paragraph, I was merely trying to convey what a strange / unique trajectory Maroon 5 have had.

fairweather johnson = technically a big seller, maybe heavily anticipated, but all the sales were right upfront (pure momentum from predecessor) and even *at the time* people knew the jig is up, usually evidenced by the singles doing badly and/or the first single doing well but them dropping off from there. so it's a successful album on paper but the career decline is evident and profound before the promo campaign has even run its course.

hootie fit this to a T from having such an enormous smash beforehand that they could get to #1 and go double platinum with an album where almost nobody who doesn't cultivate playlists of forgotten 90s singles can even recall that lead single "old man and me" ever existed. supposed former infatuation junkie is comparable in scale, but even that had "thank u" which made some kind of cultural impression.

"Old Man And Me" seems due for CVS reappraisal.

At this point, they can kind of just exist at that Starbucks wine mom plateau forever as long as Levine stays on TV and out of trouble.

They get Clear Channel pop radio play, and their Cardi B collaboration "Girls Like You" sits at #2. Th

My mom bought my brother Fairweather Johnson on release date cos he wanted it. He played it during dinner and my mom decided she hated it almost immediately, continually saying "I'm not hearing anything" after every song.

He turned it off but he loved it probably to spite mom.

God is dead.

btw re: Hands All Over - not sure what you mean about it sleeping til 4th single, "Misery" was the lead and it had a big footprint. peaked at #14 but it was on the radio forever. Oh yeah-eh!

xp Imagining that dinner scene is bringing me great joy

yeah I thought that might be the case. you and alfed are right, they've been too big for too long to have an NJ or a FJ. I meant they've plateaued at a certain level of (considerable) popularity that it's not possible for them to have an NJ.

Bizarre trajectory for a band though: unexpectedly boosted by your frontman getting a job as a talent show judge.

if The Massacre is the last "core" NJ, what's the heart music NJ?

Real Madrid 2018 Champions League?

Neymar is PSG’s New Jersey

Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

Can't believe I didn't think of this earlier, it's a classic New Jersey

Time will tell but good call

hmm. They've never had a million selling record right?

And the 6 year gap between records is a complicating factor

We almost have to retire this phrase because "hits" in the traditional sense don't exist anymore

I mean sales are just different but they are a popular band, they just sold out the same arena as Billy Eilish and 1975 in my town

Speaking of which: A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships.

no

fwiw I looked on Wiki and every VW album is platinum or gold, three albums in a row debuted at no. 1 which is pretty impressive for a rock band now

Ok but it was called a “classic New Jersey” and clearly it isn’t

modern vampires of the city is a better fit

I still think we must retire the term unless it's for pop superstars like Drake.

objection overruled

bastinato for you

you guys are basically arguing with L Ron Hubbard about Scientology

Battlefield Earth was Hubbard’s NJ

By the time MISSION earth came out everyone knew the game was up

Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

Can't believe I didn't think of this earlier, it's a classic New Jersey

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

I agree that nothing should be labelled a New Jersey until its follow-up is out.

Yeah without a follow-up, it's hard to tell if an album is a NJ or not.
As for FOTB, it's far from being ma favourite of theirs (VW/MVOTC first, depending on the mood, then FOTB then Contra) but it's very good and it seems it's quite popular and most of the VW fans love it so it doesn't feel like a NJ to me.

yeah, i think for many people this is their favorite release of theirs. On top of that, they're trying a bunch of new things on it, so I don't really see it as the creative stagnation coasting on momentum that for me NJs have been about.

y'all watch

Might be too early to say, but I feel like reputation will ultimately be a New Jersey.

― triggercut, Wednesday, August 29, 2018 6:39 AM (nine months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm

not a bad prediction

Tonight when my daughter wasn't coming up from the basement to get ready for bed, I blasted "Bad Medicine" to flush her out.

You = cool dad

I 100% stand by my Culture II vote for New Jersey status. Follow-up or no.

Yeah Culture II might be a good one. But was it big enough, though ?
Or just the second album of a band/artist that had a big first album and then (more or less) vanished ?
Maybe a NJ requires a more established act than one like Migos.

it didn't have anything as big as "bad and boujee" but it felt just as big as its forerunner if not bigger? like if you tallied up streams and spins and all that shit i wouldn't be surprised if it actually outdid culture

even suggesting that migos 'vanished' after culture is absolutely preposterous

like, are you all misremembering culture as being significantly bigger than it actually was? i just am not understanding the disconnect here

if you tallied up streams and spins and all that shit i wouldn't be surprised if it actually outdid culture

Cause it has twice as many tracks.