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

p4k claims Adele's 25 is a New Jersey:

And in 2017, a strong year for albums—the entire Urban Contemporary category alone would make a fine Album of the Year slate—the voters couldn't find anything more compelling for the main event than Justin Bieber, post-peak Drake, Sturgill Simpson, and a particularly cursory Adele. While 21 defined the zeitgeist and carried the industry in sales for two years, 25 sold well and didn't linger. 25 is the “Set Fire to the Rain” to 21's “Rolling in the Deep."

25 is the third single from 21, 21 being the lead single from 21

A third single that is/was still pretty massive.

I think the most recent NJ could be Prism: "Roar" seems to be the only single whose shelf-life has lasted beyond it's initial chart run.

in fuckin' 2015 colleagues claimed 25 was already a NJ. And the album's already at least matched its predecessor's sales.

No one has a clue how well Adele will do in three years.

well, she is a singer, singer

Sia fits the bill here I think. "1000 Forms of Fear" was a huge album commercially and did fairly well critically, but it's definitely the moment the train went off the tracks. It's a shame because the album that came before "We Are Born" is probably her best.

sia is still minting number ones so idk

Ehhhh, idk, pretty hard to argue that there's a "career decline" when the album put forth as a New Jersey is basically her breakthrough, she's only had one album after, and that more recent album has sold as many or more copies than the breakthrough, AND netted her her first #1 on a bunch of charts.

xpost

Yeah I think I'm off the mark here - it's an artistic decline in terms of quality but Sia is still hugely successful.

"Peter Gabriel's Us, maybe? "

I scrolled thruogh the thread to see if this was there. Seems to definitely qualify. This was essentially his last album of his (well, he only really release one new album since then), there was a massive, multi year tour after it, at least 4 singles...and none of them had staying power. Note that I rate the album pretty highly and really love it, and loved the three shows I saw in support of it, but it seems like a weird abberation now for sure.

last album of HITS i mean

Us may be an outlier but it doesn't feel hollow

hard to argue for gabriel when he's only released one proper studio album of new material since, ten years after "us", and that album doesn't even seem to have aimed for serious chart success. it's like arguing "the sensual world" as kate bush's "new jersey".

25's sales don't disqualify it from being a new jersey, from the OP: it's still super popular and even more popular than the albums that preceded it but there's some sense that the gig is up.

http://pitchfork.com/news/72471-drakes-more-life-goes-no-1-sets-streaming-record/?mbid=homepage-more-latest-and-video

that settles the question regarding "Views" as a "New Jersey"... no decline yet for Drizzy !
(that said, even before "More Life", I disagreed with the idea of "Views" being a "New Jersey")

Yeah people get carried away when it comes to drake, lol. Pure wishful thinking. He's not going anywhere.

i was loudly naysaying the Drake idea upthread, he's the biggest artist in the world, has been for 2 years. makes no sense to suggest otherwise!

(quickly ctrl-f's) no one's mentioned Christina Aguilera's _Back to Basics_

Wasn't that more like a peak for her?

Let's see, Stripped sold 13 million copies, Back to Basics sold 5 million (though it was a double album, so more like 2.5 million?)

and the next album sold 330,000

I'm probably remembering through my own lens, but Back to Basics felt like the reinvention album that bought her career extra time, at a time when pop radio was rapidly moving away from the teen stars of her generation. It felt really fresh and lively and still kinda does to me. That persona fit her very well. She'd also kind of boxed herself in with the whole Xtina personality, as lucrative as that was for a time, so this album seemed like a successful correction to that

Not buying Back to Basics as an "event" even if it did sell 5 million worldwide. US sales were 1.7 mil, which doesn't even put it in the top ten sellers of the year, and way way off of her earlier sales even if you account for state of the CD market by 2006. Only the first single made the top ten, the next couple slumped and the last two didn't chart. Throw in the gimmicks of her taking on a new persona and the prewar sonics and it starts to look more like a Chris Gaines. If anything Stripped would be the New Jersey here in terms of her career arc, but I'm not sure whether Xtina fans view it as hollow in any sense.

Pretty sure that if this thread has proven anything, it's that not every huge artist has a New Jersey. Also, New Jersey is awesome.

I feel like Christina Aguilera's decline came more from being unable to keep up with changing pop landscape that occurred between the two albums, where artists that were huge in 2006 were no longer to be found in 2010. Like she teased a shift to a more electronic based sound with "Keeps Gettin Better" from her Greatest Hits album in the fall of 2008, but by the time she was ready to release her 2010 album the world had already embraced Lady Gaga and the like, and thus seemed to be lagging behind everyone else.

It seems weird, when you have a case study like Aguilara, why acts are still taking 3 or 4 years between albums

God now I'm remembering Bionic... that album was an atrocity

Back to Basics was released before Back to Black somehow, and seemed on the pulse of something new. (Has anybody ever explored the connection between these two albums? Kinda weird that two similarly-mused blockbusters with similar titles came out within months of each other).

Bionic was her post Gaga/Kesha album, and seemed to arrive shrouded in defeat. Better to do your own thing than to play catch up, I guess.

Had she capitalized on the momentum of Keeps Gettin' Better, which was was a top ten hit and released just before Gaga got super big, things might have turned out differently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkPxgUshpec

I feel like this song is mostly forgotten.

I think the problem with post-2008 Aguilera was less market positioning or timing or w/e and simply the fact that all of her songs sucked

That's probably true as well.

I've also found it interesting it wasn't until 2012 that she finally did a song that was co-written by Max Martin.

To some extent I think she just had the right thing, wrong time, though maybe sounded a couple of just slightly sour notes with the general public. Like I feel like with both "Dirrrty" and later "Not Myself Tonight" she was rocking different kinds of uncompromising sexuality that were kinda not what the world wanted or was ready to get on board with, one too hot and the other too cold. But both really confident and strong and interesting - realer, but more icy and intimidating than, say, Gaga or Rihanna tapping into the same S&M tropes as the "Not Myself Tonight" videos. Those two made the material seem more fun and more safe (or at least just part of palette of funky quirky artsiness). Put another way, Xtina reads to me as proudly performing her own fantasies and fuck you if you it doesn't get you off, where obviously she would have sold better if she'd spun it more into cheesecake for the young straight male audience. (Even "Candyman" actually feels more like being in drag as a cheesecake pinup than any attempt to become a present-day object of late-night longing.) I mean:

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/enhanced/web05/2012/8/21/17/enhanced-buzz-20820-1345584924-10.jpg

^^^ this is totally awesome to me but also totally not "commercial." Stronger songs might have certainly helped - even as I'm writing this, I admire the moves more than I want to listen to those tracks - but I think at this point Aguilera was sort of a star without an audience really interested in what she was doing. Probably, she was also saddled with the long-term narrative (three albums on!) of "woah, watch out! The teen idol is shedding her old image and getting S-E-X-Y!" which obscured what was specifically going on with the music, the lyrics or the videos. So if you weren't on board with any of the above, it was easy to write it off as "declining star trying to shock people and get attention with sex" which ties into lots of gendered stuff that I probably don't even need to parse out re: which people get defined as skanky, desperate, etc. etc.

I was going to also say that she seemed to be actually aping Gaga, specifically the "Alejandro" video, but I looked it up and the "Not Myself Tonight" clip actually dropped a couple months earlier! Huh.

there was basically no momentum to speak of with "keeps gettin' better" -- it was technically a top ten 'hit' on the strength of first-week download sales (i.e. her diehard fans), but it tumbled off the charts shortly after. i barely heard it on the radio at the time and naturally have never heard it since then. it is indeed mostly forgotten.

bionic really was a disaster. it had been talked up so much as being somewhat boundary-pushing for a mainstream pop album, and then it just... wasn't. and the songs really weren't there save for a couple that were perplexingly made bonus tracks. lotus was very nearly irredeemable.

It seems weird, when you have a case study like Aguilara, why acts are still taking 3 or 4 years between albums

― duped and used by my worst Miss U (President Keyes), Tuesday, May 9, 2017 10:53 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so many reasons for this with pop stars - legal limbo, getting producers, getting songs, planning the album campaign - like she can't just pop into the studio and cut a record in two weeks

but more than anything it's label politics and bullshit - reminds me of Sky Ferreira's label taking the budget for her followup record and giving it to Halsey.

capitol must be a mess right now. their flagship pop artist katy perry is currently in the midst of the steepest commercial decline recent years have seen and their next big hope halsey is just starting to scrape the top 40 with a "needed me" ripoff. like how out of touch are they

i find myself wishing stars like Christina would just say "fuck it" and ditch the whole circus and go make a terrific record on the cheap somewhere. what are some examples - if any exist - of a star that big doing something like that?

or is it basically impossible because many at that level *need* the "getting producers, getting songs" part of the process to actually create something, and that part of the process costs lots of money?

like, i have no idea if you all are gonna say "nobody's done that" OR "here are 20 good examples"

definitely depends how many instruments they can play / if they can be their own producer. like i imagine Lady Gaga could make a solo piano record in a week if she wanted or needed to. amy winehouse could've. britney spears definitely couldn't

I would assume most major artists' contracts preclude them from ditching the whole circus and making a terrific record on the cheap somewhere

idk that Miley record with the Flaming Lips?

charli xcx's number 1 angel, maybe

(if you buy that it was recorded behind the label's back, which I kinda don't)

going back there's Nebraska

Nashville seems to let its stars do low-key vanity albums every once in awhile-- your bluegrass, gospel, Americana-like, instrumental guitar records etc

Pink kinda did that on her third album - she got together with Tim Armstrong from Rancid and wrote 10 songs in a week, then padded the album out with a couple of Linda Perry leftovers and a song with Peaches. Everyone hates it, but it's my favorite of her albums.

I would assume most major artists' contracts preclude them from ditching the whole circus and making a terrific record on the cheap somewhere

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Tuesday, May 9, 2017 4:21 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well yeah, but what are those contracts like? 3-4 record deal? by the time an artist reaches this theoretical point, they would've presumably already run out their contract.

360 deals, surely

xxxp alpine static it may not have been done on the cheap but ANTI is the all-time 'Fuck it' album by a pop star ever.

in what universe does an album that hones in on the most successful part of its all-over-the-place predecessor ("Pour It Up"), has well-curated features including fucking Drake, and generally hews to sonic trends qualify as a "fuck it" album

like I know that's the marketing but come on

when did 360 deals become the norm?