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

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.

My theory is that people are finally starting to agree with me that LDR fukkin sux

Norman Fucking Mockwell!

shit!

DJP OTMFM

Good points upthread: the last two LDR albums were too much like what she had just done, and came out too soon together, to really garner much acclaim. There's one good album split between the two.
It's the upcoming album that will really point to what's to come for her.

last two albums were really good, stragglers just moved on

Will be interesting to see if she can keep the faith, or will go out in a blaze of glory.

I'm sure we'll find out one of these days

ITT I learned that Bon Jovi has a whole bunch of albums in the 21st Century I've never heard of

Every band has a "This House is Not for Sale"

I think there was definitely a huge shift in how Lana was perceived after she made her "Question for the culture" Instagram posts, which came a few months after NFR.

Every band has a "This House is Not for Sale"

Celine Dion - Courage
Brand New - Science Fiction
Brockhampton - Iridesence
Madonna - Madame X
Jack White - Boarding House Reach
The Killers - Wonderful Wonderful
LCD Soundsystem - American Dream
The Raconteurs - Help Us Stranger
Cake - Showroom of Compassion
Incubus - Light Grenades

(Thanks to whoever posted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_200#Largest_drops_from_number_one in the Odelay thread)

ITT I learned that Bon Jovi has a whole bunch of albums in the 21st Century I've never heard of

― Lord Pickles (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, January 22, 2023 7:25 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"It's My Life" is their 3rd biggest song on Spotify

Well, it seems that "Sgt Peppers" itself was being perceived as The Beatles' "New Jersey" according to this review on its release. ...Not quite altogether wrong?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/arts/music/archives-beatles-sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-review.html

that definitely feels like the last album where everyone is aligned on a unified vision of the ban

Another partial UK example: Biffy Clyro's Opposites. Their BPI certifications (2x Platinum at best) seem to underplay how ubiquitous this band was during the Only Revolutions era. That album alone had a string of hits and was in the charts for two years straight (and only peaking in its 43rd week). Follow-up double (!) album Opposites inevitably claimed them their first UK No. 1 album and stayed in the charts fine enough for 41 weeks but the only song I remember, the one with the promotional weight behind it, was the (shite) lead single Black Chandelier. Their subsequent chart-topping albums are fanbase-only affairs.

I've never heard a note by Biffy Clyro, who remain inexplicably unmentioned in the "worst rock band name ever" thread. Name aside, are they any good?

no

They are the worst band in Scotland by a cuntry mile