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

also new jersey's seeming hollow is supposed to happen in hindsight, an immediate press backlash to a new album is kinda neither here nor there

Weezer is an odd case overall, they feel like they kind of had three distinct career (alt rock sensations/indie cult act/slightly cooler OK Go)

yeah & isn't the "feeling hollow" partly a commercial thing, like that its huge sales don't result in the songs having any legs? not just that some critics or whatever say "yeah I don't feel this one as much".

xp

the fact that we're hinging anything on the opinion of "emo kids and p4k" suggests "event album" in the sense of new jersey doesn't apply

not that this will stop someone from reviving this thread with THE SUBURBS in six months

Reflektor is a better choice for Arcade Fire anyways.

Also while rivers on MySpace might be right about "marketplace parity" in the sense that make believe was a bigger deal among 2005 albums than the blue album was among 1994 albums, saying that makes make believe a bigger deal than the blue album is only true if you believe new music in every year stays equally culturally noteworthy irrespective of marketplace shrink. By rivers on MySpace logic, American idiot is a far bigger deal than Dookie, etc

Also if "Beverly hills" was in a whole other unprecedented level for the band, it clearly wasn't their "born to be my baby"

I just looked it up on wiki and American Idiot sold 15M worldwide! (Dookie did 20 but still)

man y'all are making this a straw man party. "beverly hills" was the second biggest song of '05. the record went platinum. it was everywhere in used record stores a number of months later. that's the pertinent 'hindsight hollowness.' the mention of "emo kids and p4k" was in reference to the Green album, and was pretty clearly a tangential point (and we've already established upthread that critical backlash at the time is irrelevant).

i'll agree that weezer have a weird career and don't /totally/ fit the model but sweet christ calm down

i have a theory that every super popular artist has a "New Jersey" - like Bon Jovi's album New Jersey -- where 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.

― Elrond Hubbard (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, August 7, 2012

that's why Weezer doesn't fit.

Yeah, I mean, we can have another thread for middling mediocre-performing albums by big-ish artists, mobilized by one hit but gaining no place in anybody's hearts, but it's kinda not as interesting as looking around and realizing that something truly massive and ubiquitous-feeling, the latest missive from a juggernaut, has quietly become an obscurity. There really aren't that many New Jerseys, "every huge artist" notwithstanding.

Every artist has a moment to audition for a New Jersey on this thread.

it's true i'm an uptight crybaby about this stuff but every time it gets revived i'm legit excited someone found an artist we forgot in our thorough search nigh ought two years ago, and instead it's always someone who doesn't know how to count to 3x platinum

woof pretend i said "just over" instead of "nigh ought" i'm this far from an "au contraire, mon frere!" apparently

not "every huge artist" has an NJ moment, though.

Lol I feel like "Beverly Hills" fills the role of millenial-analogue to "Bad Medicine" really well, so much so that I'm tempted to poll the two songs.

yeah, I had to play "Beverly Hills" on Spotify just now because I had no idea what song you guys were talking about, and I guess it sounds sort of familiar.

the question is does the above post discredit or reinforce make believe's already-power-vetoed consideration for NJ status // subtext being i don't think anyone here can even agree on the criteria

I'm personally not sold on it as 'event' - 'rock album that did pretty well for the period, above average for the band' sure, but I don't remember it being a 'thing' at the time.

Weezer's New Jersey had to have happened by the late 90s

Criteria IMO

1. A big deal album (at least 3x platinum, possible Rivers On MySpace exceptions for the last ten years) that did as well as or better than the last album, which was also a big deal album.
2. The next album was, if not a straight out flop, undeniable evidence the act had been knocked down a tier.
3. In hindsight, the success of the the album in question was puffed up by previous triumphs.

So whether you want to say make believe was an event album for 2005 standards, there's no way to argue maladroit was a slippery when wet. Make believe's success came from an exceptionally big hit on it.

It'd almost be like saying chuck berry's New Jersey was the album with "my ding-a-ling" on it

Maladroit for some reason seemed to come really hard on the green album's heels. Like it seemed like as soon as I digested Hash Pipe there was already a video for Gone Fishin (which I barely saw) (I barely hear that song tbh) and a whole nother album to go with it.

Tbf I'm not sure whether to chalk that up to the peculiarity of my experience or the fundamental erraticness of Weezer's career

Whoops BIG Amendment to criteria 1 - on phone, sorry - the New Jersey does NOT have to do as well as the slippery when wet. It just has to do considerably well, on a level well above the keep the faith

or as mr raffles said in the initial reposting

To be a New Jersey:
- follow-up to a huge, (possibly) defining record
- has less and/or smaller hits than prev album - or - hits based more on momentum than appeal
- brings with it the feeling that the NEXT record (if there is one) will see the bottom fall out (relatively speaking)

with the multi-platinum bar added to keep solipsistic indie fucks from talking about whichever pavement or death cab album all their friends bought but now no one talks about, and those feelings about then next dropping replaced with the knowledge so prognosticators have to sit on their hands

keep the faith was huge in the UK though. They actually started playing stadiums here at that time and still do.

the almighty wikipedia says slippery when wet is 3x platinum in the uk, new jersey 2x platinum and keep the faith 1x platinum. it does seem their singles game was strong over there though

they probably got a lot more airplay with keep the faith but those 2 albums were huge at school but keep the faith kept them in the big league here with huge singles.

totally endorse the brits starting an "EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW" thread

a band like def leppard certainly lost momentum here Hysteria sold a lot and lets get rocked was a huge hit and I think Adrenalize sold OK but pretty sure that meets the croteria for this thread in the UK. no idea how it sold in the usa

adrenalize is on the poll thread we did

BEST/MOST "BON JOVI'S NEW JERSEY" ALBUM EVER

heard "let's get rocked" on a 90s flashback station a few months ago and maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan

the video i think promoted that song. I remember it on the chart show and totps (as well as a live performance)

I can think of one HUGE hit album wonders in the UK like Lighthouse Family or David Gray but not a Be Here Now type album. Think that might be out on its own.

i cant even remember the name of the follow up to simply reds 'stars' so it might qualify haha

still mad at myself for caving to the pleas that rattle & hum anddon't look back be included in the poll - there's no way that achtung baby or third stage could be seen as Keep The Faiths

linkin park - meteora

A lot of legit New Jerseys seem to have one big memorable hit equatable to the biggest of the previous album and several more hits that are lost to time - Bad Medicine, Whats The Frequency Kenneth, Lets Get Rocked

Simply Red's follow up to Stars qualifies imo - 'Fairground' and some other stuff

how about m people?

elegant slumming was huge the next album had a big hit single and sold well initially but does anyone even remember it now? and the album after had a song used on a tv ad but thats about it

manic street preachers - this is my truth tell me yours

totally endorse the brits starting an "EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW" thread

― da croupier,

someone should

Hello Nasty maybe. It was an event given it had been 4 years since Ill Commuincation. 3x platinum, one huge hit ("Intergalactic"), pretty blah record.

well, the huge hit was their first Top 40 hit since 1987 and the album sales matched Ill Communication's.

"Sabotage" didn't hit top 40, wow, seemed huge at the time.

yeah, I would guess that "Sabotage" is a more known and loved song than "Intergalactic" is.

Definitive post on Be Here Now:

so instead of studying for a test i'm trying to come up with TIERS

the New Jersey: a huge event album that's massive by all reasonable standards but is shadowed by the album(s) that ironically are the only reason it was massive, since it was pretty damn shallow on its own merits (i.e. New Jersey, Spellbound, For Those About To Rock, Spirits Having Flown, Afterburner, Fore!, Be Here Now in the UK)

the Fairweather Johnson: a huge event album that still sells better than it should've thanks to the band's previous success, but one could almost immediately sense fortunes going considerably southward even if one was a fan (i.e. Fairweather Johnson, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, Nine Lives, Be Here Now in the US)

― da croupier, Wednesday, 8 August 2012 23:25 (2 years ago) Permalink