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

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!

Admittedly, it does seem like the sort of thing I might have heard in a store or dentist's office without paying attention.

back to alterna-land:

Sonic Youth- Dirty. Came on the heels of critical fave Daydream Nation and major label debut Goo--got biggest push of their career, was their biggest seller, but I doubt people rate it as highly as their previous albums now, and the stuff that came immediately after definitely felt past-prime.

I bet Modern Rock has a lot of these. Chocolate Starfish? Creed probably has one.

The concept doesn't really work for bands that are more cultish in the first place. Besides, in my anecdotal experience, Dirty is a favourite among people my age who aren't SY devotees or indie nerds.

that's crazy

'huge artist' releasing 'huge event album' is a pretty rare thing tbh, especially lately

sonic youth were not huge by any means

New Jerseys are my bread + butter.

Some more traits of NJs:

- It's a double album or follows a double album (Clash wouldn't count because of Combat Rock. Also, I was 10 when Mellon Collie came out and I know for sure that's not a NJ. I still hear all of the singles more than one should for a NJ)

- One or more of the follow-up singles has some sort of gimmick/promotional angle to it (like the music video is tied-in to a contest/MTV movie or something)

Britney's Oops! sold less and the hits weren't as big, but I don't think it counts. It came out early 2000 (right when Teen Pop as a whole cultural thing hit critical mass with No Strings Attached) -- The genre's wave was so huge that it feels like part of the Baby era.

The first teen pop certified NJ that comes to mind is Backstreet Boys - Black & Blue. That was destined for NJ status as soon as one of BSB said it would break NSYNC's sales record.

Green Day at this point might have two NJs - Insomniac (debatable because some ppl saw it as a rush job when it came out) and 21CBD

yeah Backstreet and Green Day picks otm

Blink 182's Take Off Your Pants & Jacket

Modest Mouse's "Good News For People Who Love Bad News" really feels like this for me in the non-stadium filling band category.

that was their big platinum breakthrough, though! the one after that would make way more sense. i heard "Dashboard" on the radio TWICE last week, which was really odd considering how quickly it disappeared after it was initially a hit.

Diamonds and Pearls
True Colors
The Fat of the Land
Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie

I somehow believe that Echo & The Bunnymen's self-titled belongs here, but despite the wall-to-wall airplay of "Lips Like Sugar" on KROQ out here I'm not sure the sales really qualify it for NJ status.

The Fat of the Land is a good inclusion, though in that case the momentum it coasted on was from its own (by that point quite old) early singles.

To me The Chemical Bros' Surrender feels a bit like a New Jersey album but it's still very highly rated by lots of people, so maybe not.

I want to say The Cranberries' To The Faithful Departed, but (for example) even though it went 2x platinum in the US that was down from a 7x platinum performance for their second album, so it looks like most people realised straightaway that the shine had come off.

50 Cent - The Massacre

Anybody heard any singles from this record lately? Interscope pushed (and shoved) it through one of the earliest examples of the preplanned rerelease to 5x Platinum, and it spawned four top 10 singles, but far as I can remember no one ever loved it even when it was new.

The Massacre is otm

The Caution Horses
Bang!
Go Bang!
Internationalists

vespertine

The Fat of the Land is a good inclusion, though in that case the momentum it coasted on was from its own (by that point quite old) early singles.

this is getting more and more common with rap/R&B albums that come out 1-3 years after the biggest advance single

As far as Sonic Youth is concerned, this phenomenon seems to fit what I was thinking about Washing Machine the other day (I'd also begrudgingly accept that Experimental Jet Set fits). In spirit if not in actuality.

Some other nominees:

Richard Marx - Rush Street (his precipitous plummet from the charts has always baffled me somewhat)
The Monkees - Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (I think? There might be an argument for Headquarters, though.)
Vanessa Williams - The Comfort Zone (...maaaaaybe?)