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

lol actually, apologies to dog latin, i think *i'm* getting to deep into notions of quality influencing the new jersey-ness of a record, just from the other end. i also live in the us so i never experienced "tender" as a huge hit

fwiw i was not among those submitting 13, or any blur album, for NJ status.

xp Blur is a bad choice. They don't have a New Jersey. 13 is a perfect album btw.

xp Rihanna doesn't have a New Jersey and I will lose my shit if anyone on here calls Anti a New Jersey.

Part of this discussion that I wish newer posters would get is that the aesthetic merit of the New Jersey contender is irrelevant.

fwiw i was not among those submitting 13, or any blur album, for NJ status.

― got the scuba tube blowin' like a snork (Doctor Casino), Thursday, August 30, 2018 8:39 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah i totally know, i was just trying to square the very otm assessment you made with dog latin's claim

13 was huge and hyped (not in the least because of the much-reported 'break up with Justine Frischmann'-angle), Tender was also huge. It's not a NJ though, nor a career killer like Fairweather Johnson.

And indeed, aesthetic merit doesn't matter.

to be fair a very slight amount of quality decline is implied in the title of this thread ("feels a bit hollow")

i agree that aesthetic merit is irrelevant to an album's qualifications NJ status - see all the DANGEROUS stans who voted for it in the poll. but the way that the factors that generate a NJ interface with aesthetics is interesting imho!

not all bloated indulgent albums are NJs, but nearly every NJ is bloated and indulgent, and once something DOES qualify as a NJ, it can be *more or less of one* based on bloat and indulgence, because "new jersey is a feeling."

i think "bad" is MJ's new jersey

shd be "mostly irrelevant" in my first line there - yes. "feels a bit hollow" matters, tho this can be located as much in the artist's star-text as in the music. what's key is to not treat this as *central* or you end up with just "album where they faltered creatively." combine that with not thinking much about "huge" and "event" and you end up with the worst kind of NJ newbie submission, "first album i didn't like as much by some act that sold 50,000 copies at their peak."

"dangerous" won the poll!

or no wait it was UYI. but dangerous was #2.

WHO IS IT

(breaks a glass)

I agree MJ’s NJ is Bad. But it’s still loved, influential and respected, isn’t it ?

That said, Dangerous too...

Blur's New Jersey is clearly The Great Escape fwiw.

a new jersey has to be an album of comparable success to its predecessor, but it can't be followed by an album of equal or greater success, because then it doesn't signal a career decline. check the stats on the great escape and blur versus new jersey and keep the faith. blur don't have one.

nah i think a NJ is kind of pored-over, overthought... The Great Escape seems opposite of that. I think Blur were focused more on the pub and pills during that recording xp

If Damon Albarn has a New Jersey, it's probably that The Good The Bad And The Queen album or maybe the 2nd Gorillaz album.

Does it work that way? Can someone have a New Jersey in an entirely different project?

Does Phil Collins have a New Jersey?

and since i am now prepared to declare Born This Way a settled New Jersey, here are the final stats:

THE FAME (2008) + THE FAME MONSTER (2009) - 15,000,000 worldwide, combined. in the US, the original THE FAME is certified 3x platinum and the freestanding EP at 1x (though it's not super clear how the deluxe edition fits in). all seven singles are US top ten, with two #1s and a #2 that is massive in the zeitgeist ("bad romance") but has the bad luck to be up against "empire state of mind." as singles/DLs, those top performers sold 8, 10, and 11 million.

BORN THIS WAY (2011) - 6,000,000 sold worldwide, US is 2x platinum. four top-ten singles and one more at #29 (so definitely not a Fairweather Johnson - she was still clearly a major act), but the biggest of these is the first, which shot to #1 (supporting "event" status) and it sells 4x platinum. obviously by 2011 physical sales are in much deeper decline and itunes sales are taking a real hit from streaming, so we should make some allowances - but clearly this is a moment that might charitably be seen as around, i don't know, 1/2 to 2/3 as successful as the artist's previous phase.

ARTPOP (2013) - 2,500,000 sold worldwide, US is single platinum. first single peaks at #4, second at #13, third at a pathetic #76.

the next album after that is a collection of duets with tony bennett (certified gold). her return to mainstream pop in 2016 goes single-platinum with two singles peaking at #15 and #4, neither of which i've ever heard except when actively seeking them out. i think if there have been any New Jerseys in the 2010s, Born This Way is one of them.

A major act I don’t think has been mentioned here —

Public Enemy, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black

Does Phil Collins have a New Jersey?

― billstevejim,

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f5/Phil_Collins-But_Seriously.jpg/220px-Phil_Collins-But_Seriously.jpg

A major act I don’t think has been mentioned here —

Public Enemy, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black

― stan in the place where you work (morrisp)

They weren't multiplatinum in '91.

Bon Jovi continued to have big hits throughout the '90s from albums like Keep The Faith. So I think an artist can still chart and have platinum albums post- New Jersey.

xxxxpost: yes, it's ...But Seriously, identified by chr1sb3singer upthread. We Can't Dance was also identified for Genesis, but controversially didn't make it to the poll.

xxp -- Why does it have to be multiplatinum to qualify?

The album peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 chart and at No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. On November 26, 1991, Apocalypse 91 was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of one million copies in the United States.

At a glance, looks like it performed better than their previous album...

Public Enemy talk leads to thinking of how a massive soundtrack single ("Fight The Power", "You Could Be Mine") ends up overshadowing the album that follows.

That was one of the criteria several years ago. And I don't think anyone considered a hollow album that augured the decline of PE.

*considered it

Was wondering why politics thread was quiet, realized it's cos yall in here

And I don't think anyone considered a hollow album that augured the decline of PE.

I thought we just established that "New Jersey" wasn't considered to be that (at the time)! I thought that was the point... it's only definable in retrospect, after you see how the artist's next albums perform.

Apocalypse '91 semi-qualifies i think...like a lot of NJ type albums it's really extremely good but it also felt like their moment was passing as it was being released. It's maybe not a full NJ though.

i kinda do think MJ's NJ is Bad as well...it was a huge album but the songs just weren't as undeniable except for a couple, maybe arguably only one. I'm not sure if external factors contributed to the NJ thing, i mean this was the time when MJ took some giant irreversible steps from being the coolest pop superstar in the world to the strangest and least-appealing to likely a majority of the tens of millions who scooped up Thriller.

i know a 2,000 post thread is a big ask, but if you're a new arrival who finds this kind of record nerdery entertaining, you may not find reading through it to be unpleasant homework. the multiplatinum requirement is there because this is about "huge artists" who release "huge event albums," and how their position in pop culture shifts over time, and none of that makes sense for an artist selling at subplatinum numbers, they just aren't central to pop culture enough to be comparable to michael jackson, g'n'r, or bon jovi. we may wish the artist was at that level of bigness but it isn't always the case.

that being said, i could see a case being made for public enemy because things aside from their raw sales marked their centrality and made them household names - newspaper features, suburban fear-mongering, edward furlong's t-shirt in terminator 2 - but this gets us further from the reception of the records themselves.

i think the friction between an anticipation/expectation on the part of the artist and perhaps the core fanbase that this album, the future New Jersey, will be a monstrous success that will equal or top the previous and perhaps be a true defining statement vs the reality that everyone else has moved on, isn't anticipating it as much, and the album is also actually not as compelling.

for some reason it reminds me of when an NFL running back runs for like 1800 yards in a season and everyone (especially the player and his coach) is saying he's going to rush for 2500 yards the next season, and then the guy creaks along for 1100 yards and declines and retires.

mea culpa on the "multiplatinum" thing (it's true I haven't read the whole thread); but doing a Ctl-F, I don't see that was ever firmly established as criteria?

i know a 2,000 post thread is a big ask, but if you're a new arrival who finds this kind of record nerdery entertaining, you may not find reading through it to be unpleasant homework.

tell that to my CPU

the thing about bad is that i suspect it's only a subset of music critics and dedicated fans who would consider it his real dropping-off point. in the wider culture i still think it's seen about the way as it was when it came out: big, awesome, still-occupying-the-throne followup by the biggest star in the world. some of its extra-musical stuff is iconic and central to his megastar persona (especially the costuming in the videos); the extra-musical steps into alienating the audience correspond much more to dangerous, chronologically. bad produced seven top-ten hits, of which five went to #1 and at least four are still in regular rotation ("bad," "man in the mirror," "smooth criminal," and "the way you make me feel"). new jersey had five top-ten hits but their long-term status is much shakier i'd say. bad also did not signal a career decline - dangerous did just about as good sales-wise.

morrisp - not by any means a formal criterion but i think it's more like, if record sales aren't in bon jovi scale, it's essential to prove "hugeness" and "event" in some other way, to avoid backsliding into talking about neutral milk hotel or what have you.

Every era has its own "Neutral Milk Hotel" - an act ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a cultural decline

i think Bad qualifies in that it's a huge event album that in retrospect was just not at the same level and didn't have the same long-term listener enthusiasm. I would agree that it's a tough call, and I think MJ still being so huge in 1987 is kind of tricky, but i also think much of that album's success was riding on the success of Thriller as opposed to its own merits (which are not insignificant, but not near Thriller or Off the Wall level.) Dangerous...maybe? I guess it depends on which album was the one that took the wind out of MJ's sales.

going back a bit, as a U2 fan i can say they've had a weird career trajectory in terms of maintaining popularity and not being felled by their first NJ, and in fact coming back with their second-biggest selling album and one that is generally considered to be their best (if the Joshua Tree ain't.) I guess R&H doesn't quality in one sense: perhaps that it didn't quite feel like the gig was up at the time, it just felt like they'd made a major misstep. If we consider Pop as well, I think the same held true. The difference between the aftermaths of the two albums is for the former, U2 decided to do everything that was NOT expected of them, not just with the music but with full color ad campaigns and covers and garishness and OTT fashion. They went from posing like Mellencamp to trying to be like Bowie. But after Pop, they did what everyone would have expected them to do -- returned to a safer and more generic sound. So the stage was set for the actual NJ, which unlike the other two didn't feel like a misstep, it felt like they'd be continuing to do nothing surprising and they'd said everything they needed to say.

if one of the criteria of a new jersey is that your next album has to have a song called "keep the faith" on it, then bad wins.

now I'm trying to predict the next In the Aeroplane Over The Sea, the ten year old semi-obscure album turned supermeme

the next "Africa"

ha with both of those it's like, why didn't i bet somebody

xxxp Yeah, I totally get ya...

Nominating For Emma...

bon iver s/t is some indie NJ