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

xp Absolutely. Maybe Pop too but I think that was perceived as a dud right away.

That might qualify!

xpost

Pop followed by their second best selling album of the Soundscan era.

c'mon there's no song on Damita Jo that could be plausible as a #1 pop hit even w/o the super bowl

she didn't need a #1, just a top 5; given some of her other hits, "Just A Little While" or "All Nite (Don't Stop)" could conceivably had gotten there if they'd gotten the same type of saturation push that "All For You" and "Someone To Call My Lover" received even considering that at least one is blatantly inferior to those two singles

yeah Atomic Bomb is good - they really tried hard to worm out another hit off that album after "vertigo" and failed

Listening to Rhythm Nation in the car a couple weeks ago with friends we wondered how Janet's sales and saturation could have so utterly collapsed after 2002 without the record company actively sabotaged her, as someone posted above.

*sabotaging

xp I'm unsure about the definition here. I was basing it on da croupier's "served as a stopgap before a major drop or left turn", with ATYCLB as the left turn (or right turn). If the only option is a major drop then by definition you can't come back from a New Jersey. But I like records that feel at the time like the beginning of the end but turn out not to be, I guess because they're an encouraging change from the usual narrative of irreversible decline.

yeah the problem with pop is that it wasn't a stopgap, it was a bomb

what about....

Bowie's Tonight

xpost so In The Zone is her New Jersey for older men, is what you're saying

― da croupier, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 2:54 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

waiting on a text from someone from a more desirable demographic who doesn't own any silkworm albums

True. Forget Pop. Tonight's a good one.

setting aside the fact that Damita Jo just isn't that great compared to the run of Janet albums preceding it starting with Control, you really can't downplay the effect that zero label support, limited radio play and a blanket ban by MTV on its videos was going to have on the performance of that album

add in the quality of the album and it's even grimmer

Celebrity Skin

Actually Bowie might be the only artist with two New Jerseys:

Tonight & Alladin Sane

um a lot of people like Aladdin Sane

yeah it's one of his best

I'm not sure the concept works before the 80s tbh

"jean genie", "panic in detroit", etc

what concept?

Presence definitely seems like a right answer: IIRC it went #1 on the strength of advance orders but despite the ILM love, when's the last time you heard "Candy Store Rock" or "Tea for One" (as opposed to "Kashmir" or even "Trampled Underfoot")? And then came that goofy pop record.

xposts!

right but it didn't signal a career decline, unless you mean "John Bonham choked on his own vomit soon after"

xp The concept being discussed in this here thread

I mean even if Aladdin Sane weren't good (which it is), the idea of an "event album" is one I associate with the 80s onwards. Bowie moved so fast from record to record, and didn't sell a huge amount, in the 70s that you don't get a hard-to-follow commercial high until Let's Dance.

right but it didn't signal a career decline, unless you mean "John Bonham choked on his own vomit soon after"

I do see In Through the Out Door as a decline but, yeah, their career as a band ended after one more album so fair point.

Boston - Don't Look Back?

i feel like i get this but i still dont know

what is pearl jam's new jersey? no code?

what about jay-z's? blueprint 2, black album and kingdom come all feel like they count for a variety of reasons

No Code was too big a dropoff in sales (and Vitalogy doesn't count because its hits had staying power), so i don't think Pearl Jam has one.

if Jay-Z has one it's Kingdom Come or American Gangster, but post-retirement thing makes that fit weird

if PJ has one it's probably No Code, but i feel like they pulled a Sting and managed to shift into emeritus status without a real "why do I own this?" moment - admittedly in part because few bought it.

bet No Code might have been a new jersey if the first single was "hail, hail" instead of "who you are"

Can we say Nickelback has had a New Jersey yet? Maybe Dark Horse?

yeah Dark Horse definitely

btw I've been listening to All For You this weekend and WAU @ "Son of a Gun", I used to go to BAT for this song and I have no fucking idea why

lol

Somebody said Genesis' We Can't Dance upthread and that's otm

MANIC PIXIE DREAM ALBUM THE THREAD

what?

more like "manic pixie dream troll"

yeah i retract alladin sane, good points

MANIC PIXIE DREAM ALBUM THE THREAD

― MUBU gai pan (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:37 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

huh?

The 257th in the Pearl Jam bootleg series totally qualifies here

haha

waht is springsteens new jersey

The River

Human Touch/Lucky Town was mentioned upthread and definitely fits

not sure Springsteen fits in this category. Human Touch-Lucky Town flopped and didn't produce any big singles either. He spent the rest of the nineties after "Streets of Philadelphia" going purposefully low key.

Nobody ever rated or bought those two records.

xpost

As Alfred said he doesn't really fit, though you rarely hear the singles from Tunnel Of Love anymore. But people still rate it highly.

I suppose we can debate how much his going low key dependend on a shrewd study of sales trends and market forces.

hey um can someone explain what whiney meant w/that post? even google doesn't come up with "manic pixie dream album"...there is some band called 1976 that had an album call manic pixie dream girl, then some articles about zooey deschnel?

xpost

i think tunnel of love is too much of a purposeful stylistic shift to be a new jersey

Tom Petty-Wildflowers

Several hits, but only one with true staying power. And She's The One was the follow-up.

hey um can someone explain what whiney meant w/that post?

I don't think anyone actually cares enough to decipher, tbh