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

My dad has a story that the local's jukebox, when there still was one, used to play songs at random in the early 90s if no one was using it and once it played Get in the Ring as a coach of OAPs came in for dinner, who all promptly complained that they were being told to suck my [page missing] and suchlike. For this reason alone UYI cannot tick the NJ 'vacant retread of its predecessor' box.

I didn't end up cutting out enough "filler" to make my playlist notable (I really only knocked out a 3 or 4 tracks per album).

The bridge section of "Estranged," flowing into the next verse ("When I find out all the reasons..."), is so damn beautiful... it's such an wonderful piece of music.

The live version of “you could be mine” that’s just been released on Spotify is such a mess. I wonder why they even released it!

Gawd, these bonus tracks!

5. DRUM SOLO (Live in Paris – 6/6/92)*
6. SLASH SOLO (Live in Paris – 6/6/92)*
7. SPEAK SOFTLY, LOVE (LOVE THEME FROM THE GODFATHER) (Live in Paris – 6/6/92)*

i saw the UYI tour and still feel ripped off that Matt Sorum played an endlessly terrible drum solo when they could’ve played Night-Train instead

A while back when I was making the case for Run-DMC's Tougher Than Leather as a Veteran's Committee-level inductee into NJ status, I totally omitted one of its other links to the titlular New Jersey: Their bizarre inclusion of screaming comedian Sam Kinison!

Bon Jovi has him introduce their video for "Bad Medicine", while Run-DMC samples the conclusion of one of Sam's (multitude of) dial-the-homophobia-all-the-way-to-11 jokes in their otherwise great track "Beats to the Rhyme". I'm guessing he shouted his way into other artists' songs/videos, but I don't remember any of them, outside of an appearance with Poison during MTV's New Years Eve show in '88 (where C.C. DeVille had "SON OF SAM" written on his guitar, how hilarious).

Kylie Minogue sampled Kinison too

Were Guns N' Roses even any good live, back in their heyday? I never saw them, but I feel like they transitioned really fast from scary aggro hard rock to bloated showbiz monstrosity.

I have fond memories - G&R were very enmeshed in my high school years, and I think I was consciously enjoying it as our version of an overblown 70s rock experience- Dazed and Confused had just come out maybe? Anyway 80,000 kids making a rock pilgrimage to a Western Sydney racecourse seemed pretty epic.

Musically yeah there were too many dumb solos, self-indulgent ballads, covers and “quotations” (eg Wild Horses, the Godfather theme). Matt Sorum seemed to get off on inflicting his terrible drumming on the audience. Axl had about 5 costume changes. But he was still a great frontman and the Appetite songs and the better Illusion songs still sounded awesome.

But judging by that 1988 Ritz footage, the OG lineup was pretty great live.

I saw the original lineup twice. Once opening for Cheap Trick in 1986 at the grubby Fenders in Long Beach and again at the infamous trainwreck/clusterfuck show opening for the Rolling Stones.

Honestly, at the time I didn't think that much of them. There were a few moments that were thrilling, but like another band I was into that year (The Replacements) I couldn't deal with their whole "we know we're a great band, but we're intentionally going to fuck up and self-sabotage anyway." This was the same year of Master Of Puppets and Reign In Blood and these junkies can't even get an Aerosmith cover right?

too many dumb solos, self-indulgent ballads, covers and “quotations”

I remember seeing them on TV, and Slash playing the "Voodoo Chile" riff at about 75% speed over and over, and thinking, "this wouldn't even impress anybody at a guitar store, and you're playing it in front of thousands?

I don't think this has ever been mentioned: Clapton's From the Cradle?

Unplugged: acoustic classics and covers, goes at least 10x Platinum in the US, 4x Platinum in the UK. Mega big career reviver et al

From the Cradle: more stripped back covers, but this time it's purist electric blues. Buyer's good will takes it to 3x Platinum in the US and it's his only UK No. 1 solo album. It now feels very forgotten.

Pilgrim: inert album of new material only goes Platinum once in the US, reaching number 4. Number 3 in the UK. Again, very forgotten.

seems a bit different based on both of the first two albums you named being pretty high concept, but from a purely commercial standpoint you're onto something. There is definitely something fishy about the fact that I owned From the Cradle as a 12-year-old who most assuredly was not buying other blues albums

The bestselling blues album in America!

Good choice. It qualifies. Yet he still earns a huge hit with Babyface's "Change the World" two years later.

Doesn't feel quite like a New Jersey to me, but can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe it's the "high concept" of From the Cradle (his first "pure" blues album--he's not doing a slowed-down acoustic "Sunshine of Your Love" or something on it)....or maybe it's the shape of Clapton's career--early "peaks," then like most 60s guys he just kind of never goes away, continuing to score top 40 hits and platinum/gold albums throughout the 80s.

Maybe it's because "Unplugged" feels like a "late career resurgence" record, not a "peak of the imperial phase" record

From the Cradle feels like a relatively uncommercial side project that happened to occur in the wake of an enormous success and rode some coattails but in a way that seemed a bit more organic happenstance vs a successful albeit empty and eventually failed stab at a massive followup.

Yeah I was thinking more commercially - largely selling on borrowed fire - rather than having a hollowness to it. Then again, it's not like Unplugged is all that well-loved these days either, but it is far better remembered that From the Cradle. He knew he had an unusually big audience in 1994 ready for whatever his next release would be no matter how off-kilter, so they ate it up but it has had little shelf life.

Renaissance?

Was the Renaissance a New Jersey?

We think Renaissance signals end days for Beyonce?

The Industrial Revolution was definitely a New Jersey, so the Renaissance can’t be.

gotta go with the Enlightenment imo

And here I thought this bump would be someone already making the case for Midnights.

New Jersey (Taylor's Version)

Certified Lover Boy by Drake is feeling more and more like a New Jersey

Drake's an artist where almost every one of his albums feels like it could be a New Jersey. I think Scorpion might be a better candidate than Certified Lover Boy, though a case could also be made for Views as well.

The Midnights campaign felt "off" from the beginning, IMO... including/especially the big pre-order push without a single. Obv the album has done just fine, but I can't help but think that the reason she didn't release a single note ahead of time wasn't b/c she felt the music was so unbelievably awesome that the frenzied crush of pre-orders would crash the global finance system. I gotta think she was squeezing all she could before the album dropped for a reason, and it sort of felt that way... but maybe only in hindsight, I guess if the album had been an artistic triumph then it would all be moot.

xpost - i've accused a few of being new jerseys itt! but this time, i mean it definitely feels like he's post-new jersey. the only reason i don't think scorpion is because that came out before "sicko mode" (which was really as much not more of a drake song) which felt like a peak

but these last couple aren't having the same impact at all

Could "Midnights" be her "Fulfillingness First Finale"? Like, it's well-liked, popular, not the huge step forward, maybe a step back, but still firmly within an impressive Imperial Phase?

idk lots of people like FFF.

And uh his biggest album yet (but not best) followed it up.

ISC is mayyyybe Stevie's NJ.

I think poorpete is suggesting a new classification: the overlooked/deep tracks album in the middle of an imperial phase?

Oh!

Every huge artist has their Royal Scam

Every huge artist has their "Fulfillingness' First Finale" - a well-liked, popular album firmly within an impressive Imperial Phase, which ultimately is not a huge step forward and is maybe a step back & is saddled with an unwieldy title

...and follows the artist's life-threatening coma?

Waiting for Taylor's Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants

Taylor Swift's Plantasia

The Taylor in Red

I know the story's a bit different in the US, but The Corrs' In Blue is, I'd argue, a bang to rights New Jersey in the UK and presumably much of the world.

Here (the UK) they were enormous (like, 9x Platinum enormous) in the Talk on Corners era, the sort of hold that can suck a band's previous work (in this case their debut album Forgiven, Not Forgotten) all the way up to No. 2 in the chats while TOC was at No. 1. TOC had four top ten hits which were on the radio forever, and sustained its commercial life (in what was then I suppose a relatively rare move) with a special edition. They became very famous in their own right so the stage was really set for them to come back with strong commercial thunder in 2000.

Which they did. "Breathless" was their only UK number one and their biggest hit in Ireland, as well as finally giving the band a hit in the US where they were strangely never as big as they could have been.

And then that's sort of it? The parent album In Blue of course sold incredibly well to begin with - to be fair, for the first few months - but its commercial legs were much shorter than what came before and it total it only goes 3x Platinum. None of the follow-up singles really did anything (at least chart-wise, not sure what radio was like but I couldn't tell you how either song goes). The following year they brought out a perhaps premature greatest hits which underperformed, as did its lead single, and then when they returned properly in 2004 the momentum had obviously long since passed.

I wonder if bands that appeal to people who don’t really follow music (Hootie, etc) are especially vulnerable to this phenomenon.

It's a lot less consistent than you'd think. I can think of a few huge plummets from albums one to two, like Duffy and Emeli Sandé, that go beyond even Fairweather Johnson territory. Whereas, say, Dido's earlier plummet was after her second album (her second album is very NJ-ish, not incidentally).

I do feel In Blue is more a NJ than a Fairweather Johnson though. If engendered in New Jersey is the feeling it would be The One or at least the crest of a moment, even if in the cold light of day nothing could quite scale those Slippery sales heights, then that seems pretty much like what happened with the Corrs. I guess it's the difference between a Bad Medicine and an Old Man & Me and I'm not totally sure what the Hootie situation is like (as we didn't really get them here) but Breathless aligns closely to a Bad Medicine imo.

Does Lana Del Rey have a New Jersey? Ever since NFM! it’s felt like the excitement over her has waned, at least in terms of critical hype and everyone lining up to award her. Not that her subsequent albums aren’t well-received, it just feels like NFM was the one where everyone got the LDR they always wanted and they don’t need anything else from her, at least as far as the discourse goes. NFM doesn’t feel like a NJ and I’m not sure Blue Banisters or Chemtrails qualify. Was NFM perceived as a big ol Statement and everything since has felt like just another good album?

It’s hard to argue against the moves artists make in terms of prolificacy in this economy and weird moment for the music industry, but … the excitement probably waned in part because Lana Del Rey doesn’t take a break. There’s too much. There’s always more about to come! It’s kind of exhausting.

(Obviously Taylor Swift gets away with this somehow and most seem cool with it, IDK)

probably something to do w LDR’s music maybe not being especially dynamic and changing in the same way and maybe the perception that she’s just doing more of the same moody slower paced stuff. I don’t know how accurate this is but NFM was received like a major step forward, compared to the big singer songwriter classics of yore, and the several since seem to haven’t been analyzed w the same depth (and I don’t get the sense it’s because the albums are considered poor or even much lesser.)

I’m a big Lana fan but after NFR I stopped getting the new ones. Kinda like Mac Demarco but without the drop in quality. I know what a new Lana album is going to entail and I’m well stocked up.