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

Btw, I'm most of the way through NJ: did this mark the exact point where Bon Jovi became a country band? Maybe what hurt its is just that it came out before the emergence of 'new country' radio?

also, i wonder this gets a bit at raffles's question of why this seems like a late 80s/early 90s thing - - - I think to have a New Jersey you have to be in that post-Thriller, pre-download age when marketing was album-oriented and there was a general tendency to milk singles out of a record for a long while, so that you could rack up these like 5-6 single runs from albums that ultimately people didn't care that much about, and meanwhile even as the album's life cycle was playing out, the band's position in pop's hierarchy was slipping, or radio formats were shifting out from under them, not completely but enough that the album never built up a longer-term base.

Setting aside my little narrative, I'll say that Oops!...I Did It Again might be a borderline case; title track is huge enough that it's probably disqualified, but "Lucky" and "Stronger" haven't exactly been radio staples since, and frankly most DJs going for the throwback "remember junior high and Britney Spears?" play are going to go for "Baby One More Time," not "Oops!," even though I think technically it was a bigger hit at the time?

"Baby One More Time" was bigger.

I think to have a New Jersey you have to be in that post-Thriller, pre-download age when marketing was album-oriented and there was a general tendency to milk singles out of a record for a long while, so that you could rack up these like 5-6 single runs from albums that ultimately people didn't care that much about, and meanwhile even as the album's life cycle was playing out, the band's position in pop's hierarchy was slipping, or radio formats were shifting out from under them, not completely but enough that the album never built up a longer-term base.

ot

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There's the 'event album' element as well xps - the album gets hyped in advance as being The Big One and it briefly seems like it is, but unlike its predecessor it leaves no trace.

There's the 'event album' element as well xps - the album gets hyped in advance as being The Big One and it briefly seems like it is, but unlike its predecessor it leaves no trace.

in that case I think Kanye's destined to have My Beautiful Dark Twisted Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Fantasy as his New Jersy

"Baby One More Time" was bigger.

Daha - you're totally right, just looked it up. Okay, I feel solid putting Oops! forward as a New Jersey within my narrowly-defined world where New Jersey status is divorced from the success or failure of albums that follow.

ould the new Rick Ross be his New Jersey or was that the last one?

― Elrond Hubbard (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

not sure i quite framed it this succinctly, but that was my general thesis in this little piece i wrote for the voice http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/08/rick_ross_god_forgives_i_dont.php

― tauheed & cambria (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 5:47 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol should this be the thread where i nitpick that review

no

incidentally, the main impact of this whole discussion for me is having "Bad Medicine" stuck in my head, also i am convinced that Bon Jovi's best hits are the ones where I can mis-hear some element of the chorus as being about Batman, as in "Your love is like Batman is in" and of course "Shot through the heart, and you're to blame / You can't run...from Bat-Man."

it's not like it would turn into GOON BEEF TIME, you know j0rd is too cool for that (xpost)

i really thought Roman Reloaded was showing major signs of the rot setting in (slower sales, much less urban radio support than Nicki's first album), but "Starships" is actually kinda bigger than "Super Bass" at this point and it'll be years before it's clear whether she's on the decline or w/e.

Tha Carter IV is pretty New Jersey, though, bet Wayne's going to face some serious indifference pretty soon.

50 Cent's The Massacre is def the most New Jersey rap album of all time, though.

The W

INXS - X

Van Halen's For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Debuted at #1, marketed as a return to Halen's hard rock sound, promises of a big party ("dude, the title says FUCK!"), blah blah blah, but overall feels like a lumbering elephant. I think the only lasting memory of it is "Right Now" being used on occasion as a campaign song.

but i so love my baby's poundcake!

Duran Duran - Seven and the Ragged Tiger

I've been wrestling with 7&TRT all day. Fits a load of the criteria, but... just doesn't smell like a NJ to me.
Can't put my finger on why.

i was gonna say carter IV but wasn't sure

FUCK by Van Halen is def a New Jersey

Blur - The Great Escape

― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 7 August 2012 18:44 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aye.

Hall and Oates - ooh yeah!

Big Bam Boom, maybe?

Those hits are still inescapable though

Bobby Brown - Bobby

i keep wanting to object to stuff because there's at least one song i hear plenty now, but i guess NJ has "Bad Medicine" so "Right Now" doesn't disqualify it

Maybe part of being a New Jersey is undergoing some kind of shift from "oh yeah, this thing is a sales juggernaut, racking up the hits!" to a perception of "one big hit and then some other stuff." And again I think this relates a lot to subsequent decisions about what stuff gets long-term airplay, and on what stations. If there's no one out there really convinced that the four or five top-twenty but not #1 singles, they'll kind of disappear from the popular imagination to the point where you scan the back of the sleeve in the used bin and go "hrm, I only recognize one of these songs on here" even though the others all had a substantial short-term radio presence. I mean, do even dentist's offices play "I Go To Extremes" at this point? Why would you, when you've got "She's Always A Woman," "The Longest Time," and so on?

btw I hope Bon Jovi is grateful, this thread is probably the most attention New Jersey has had since 1989 or so...

er, "really convinced that the four or five top-twenty-but-not-#1-singles belong in the rotation"

i can hum "I Go To Extremes" way more readily than "She's Always A Woman"

also, i feel like there should be some sort of thread-ring or meta-thread that connects all these thoughts, but this all grows, for me, out of things getting discussed on Modern Rock #1 Hits of 1999 , re: bands such as Matchbox 20 whose long strings of big, big hits have been cherry-picked down to one or two that fit the sonic profile of contemporary radio formats, while things like "Push," "3 AM," and "The Real World" have vanished despite being once their biggest, most inescapable songs.

i wrote a thing a while back that touched on how a lot of alt-rock records that crossed over to pop have mostly vanished from rock playlists -- like Alanis and Matchbox 20's big breakthroughs had tons of alt-rock hits but now you only hear "You Oughta Know" from the former and nothing from the latter on those stations

That'd be a great thread in itself, Doctor!

Loads of conflict between 'hits at the time' and 'songs perceived as hits now.'
Girls on Film (USA - didn't chart) vs Union of the Snake (#3, but has lost its status), etc...

The Eminem Show

some dude - Yeah, your posts on that same thread add a lot to this picture for me. Maybe a different topic than New Jersey albums but it's an interesting phenomenon.

Sort of the inverse of songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller

ha yes a retroactive one-hit wonder

lol should this be the thread where i nitpick that review

― some dude, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 5:58 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark

sure!

or not, whatever. you can dig up a ross thread if you want or go to the goon thread.

This literally has me in tears right now at my desk:

incidentally, the main impact of this whole discussion for me is having "Bad Medicine" stuck in my head, also i am convinced that Bon Jovi's best hits are the ones where I can mis-hear some element of the chorus as being about Batman, as in "Your love is like Batman is in" and of course "Shot through the heart, and you're to blame / You can't run...from Bat-Man."

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:01 PM (48 minutes ago)

Snoop Doggy Dogg- The Doggfather

i think my gripe was just 'fan projects an arc onto artist that does the same thing the same way over and over with mildly varying results' so kinda the opposite of this thread ha (xpost)

Storm Front belongs in this conversation but I gotta say I've heard "I Go To Extremes" more often in the last twenty years than "We Didn't Start The Fire." It's like no one cares about the latter after teachers exhausted our patience about its educational worth.

many xposts

The other thing Van Hagar's "Right Now" is remembered for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c_ZRzC2SZM

and Crystal Gravy!

re: "I Go To Extremes," you guys... may be right... wonder if this is regional or something, I really have probably heard "I Go To Extremes" a half-dozen times in my whole life, and a couple of those were me seeking it out to go "how does that song go again?"

Incredibly brilliant thread.

Kinks - Lola v Powerman and the Money-go-round

Also (tangential to this thread), recently the AV Club ran a piece about 'dead zones', i.e. artists having a period that was at the time regarded as shithouse but actually wasn't. So very otm.

(forgive bad english, sick)

speaking of, too bad Bad English doesn't apply

I loaded "I Go to Extremes" on Youtube. I've never heard this before in my life.

#3 in Canada!