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

I connected Views to the "audience knows the artist is treading water" comment based on the reception I've seen to the album. General consensus, even from Drake fans, seems to be this isn't his best work and he's coasting, even if One Dance and Bling are his biggest hits, which, if we're being totally honest, aren't exactly anything new for him (although personally I enjoy both quite a bit).

I agree that it doesn't fully qualify (at least not until his next record), though it does have some New Jersey-ish qualities.

Shock Value is an interesting proposal. It definitely felt like an "event" at least to me / the music circles I was in at the time. Coming off of two of the biggest albums of the last year/decade, star-studded guest-list and all. Give it to Me definitely felt like an event anyway, yet I think the album as a whole is largely forgotten, as are its singles. I think Apologize is far more associated with OneRepublic than Tim, so I wouldn't really count it as "his" per se, even if he was responsible for exposing the song to a larger audience. At the very least it was a sort of bookend to Tim's imperial phase. And Shock Value II came and went without a trace, so I think it's a pretty strong case actually.

so Starboy is definitely the Weeknd's New Jersey, yeah? Probably the best example since Artpop

Wasn't Born This Way Gaga's New Jersey?

Also, I think Adele's 25, might be better example of a recent New Jersey.

isn't "Hello" her signature song now though? that song was everywhere last year

I've somehow managed to avoid it after its initial run on the charts. And I haven't heard anything else from that album.

How isn't "views" not a New Jersey?

Um double negative typo. Delete "not"

Wasn't Born This Way Gaga's New Jersey?

― MarkoP, Friday, November 25, 2016 1:27 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And yes

xp no way VIEWS is his New Jersey, it's got 'Hotline Bling' (bonus track, but still) and 'One Dance,' which topped Billboard for 15 weeks and is somehow the most played song on Spotify ever.

are we so sure 25 signals a gradual career decline?

yeah, like - it can't be a New Jersey if you sell out Madison Square Garden six nights in a row.

Aren't New Jerseys supposed to become apparent only after a certain amount of time has passed? I mean Bon Jovi was still hugely popular around the time of New Jersey. It's only in retrospect that people realize that this wasn't quite as good as previous efforts and its effects show up in the sales of the post-New Jersey album.

so too soon to tell for VIEWS and 25 I would say.

but can a New Jersey have the artist's signature song on it?

what about a case where the new jersey in question signals a definite end but then the artist comes back a decade later with an even bigger album because of 9/11 or something

this is about enya's shepherd moons

but can a New Jersey have the artist's signature song on it?

― flappy bird, Friday, 25 November 2016 21:29 (forty minutes ago) Permalink

Hotline bling was out the previous year and doesn't really match the rest of the album musically

One Dance is his biggest hit though, right?

uhh

One Dance is def Drakes signature song in that it is completely unmemorable

Drake might be rap music's New Jersey

I don't really think one dance is his signature song. It's like a point of comparison Chris molanphy made, the "how do you want it" to "hotline bling"'s "California love." The former charted way higher

hang fire, wasn't The Weeknd in an artistic decline since pretty much after the first mixtape? certainly since Trilogy, i mean Kiss Land was sniffily reviewed left right and centre http://www.metacritic.com/music/kiss-land/the-weeknd

no I think Hotline Bling is his signature song, what I was asking was can a New Jersey have the artist's biggest hit on it (One Dance)?

yeah "Hotline Bling" is gonna be remembered in 10 years more than "One Dance," chart peaks be damned

does this mean one dance is the new jersey of drake singles

...yes

can we new jersey anything?

am i in the new jersey of my life? oh god

It doesn't really matter if the album has big hits on it - it's a definitive feature of New Jerseys that they are successful! ''Signature song'' might be tougher (though it'd make another fun thread: artists whose biggest song is on an album no one cares about now), but ultimately comes down to a version of the ''well, we'd have to wait and see'' issue that concerns evaluating New Jersey status.

re: Gaga, it was in a conversation about the (then-forthcoming) ARTPOP that we got into New Jerseyism in the first place - but in reference to Born This Way, and the ''successful album that still somehow diminishes the artist'' phenomenon. Each time we circle back to her, it seems more and more clear that yes, it was a New Jersey. Bummer.

Drake "hold on we're going home" feels like a more timeless piece than hotline bling to me but agree with views being the new jersey moment.

Another idea for a thread: artists who were expected to follow with a new jersey album but defied expectations e.g. Radiohead with Kid A instead of releasing OKC2.

was Views an event album though? how many people care abt albums in 2016?

perhaps these days event singles are more likely to signal a career decline

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7565791/drakes-views-has-over-3-billion-spotify-streams

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/10/28/six-months-in-the-only-person-who-can-stop-views-is-drake-himself/#78be50d57436

Tomorrow marks six months since Drake’s Views was unleashed onto the world, and in just a relatively short period of time, the hip-hop magnate’s album has proven to be a consistent seller, streamer, and truly one for the history books.. When it first hit streaming platforms, it racked up almost a quarter of a billion plays in just one week (despite the fact that it was only available on Apple Music), and that helped the new title begin with a million-plus opening frame, a truly rare feat saved for the biggest the industry has ever known.

i dunno, "As of August 2016, it has sold 1.4 million copies in the United States" which is not too impressive

Hotline Bling and One Dance account for 50% of the album's streams while the least streamed track on the album has 23.5 million listens so I'm not entirely convinced it's a hit album as much as hit singles...

Jill Stein crowdfunding for a recount after suspected Russian hacks.

I don't think it makes to much sense to think of streaming as purchases - most users are streaming for free, it's more like radio airplay with users as DJs (and treating streams as radio airplay is probably why Views performs well on the Billboard chart but not equivalent to sales performance)

I imagine these "records" nicely follow the general development in streaming growth https://www.statista.com/statistics/367739/spotify-global-mau/

For such a supposedly popular artist, it's amazing that I've never heard a single note of this Drake fellow's music in my life. Is he any good? Music is so weird and fragmented now.

oh come ON there's no way man

I don't even OWN a Drake

Is he any good?

No

*adds third thing to mrsnrub.txt*

hotline bling bangs

the only thing that might make views *not* a new jersey is that i don't think it's actually much different from his earlier albums quality-wise lol

Not a perfect fit but I suddenly thought ofSoul Asylum's Let Your Dim Light Shine just now, and it feels like a suitable contender

the 90s was pretty populated by poorly selling follow-up albums by alt-rock bands who had sizable success with their last album but shed most of their old fans

i.e. Dear You by Jawbreaker

Everclear's Scenes From An American Dream?

That did not seem like an event at the time, in my memory. A big (badly-calculated) release but nobody gave a shit.

Was actually just talking about NJ-dom in movies last night; my friends voted for Eraser for Arnold (over True Lies, which imo is a bigger event and more hollow in hindsight) just cause after the fact it doesn't even have the look/feel of a titanic blockbuster starring the biggest action hero on earth. And certainly everything after that point seems VERY diminished versus his heyday. But they also concurred with our earlier discussion of how his timeline is kind of confused by Last Action Hero, etc.

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