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

'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?)

'huge artist' releasing 'huge event album'

y'all are turning this into whichever album of some artist's that sold less than the one before it

indoor living was totally superchunk's new jersey amirite

Black and Blue strikes me as a pretty good pick:

Black & Blue debuted at number-one on the Billboard 200 after selling 1.6 million copies in its first week at retail in the US. The feat made the them the first act in history to achieve sales more than 1 million copies in the first week with back-to-back releases. The set has moved more than 5.4 million copies in the U.S. to date, according to Nielsen SoundScan.[17][18] Internationally, the album recorded the best sales in a week for an album in history by selling over 5 million copies in its first week of sales.[4][5] As of 2007, the album has sold 24 million copies worldwide.[6]

And it's like, wow! And then you look at the singles and just - "The Call"? "More Than That"? "Shape of My Heart"? Couldn't hum 'em with a gun to my head. (None of those charted spectacularly even at the time, but damn, those album sales.)

Electric Light Orchestra - Discovery

There's a couple of great songs plus a lot of soppy wet ballads and their most embarrassing track, "The Diary of Horace Wimp." It really felt like Jeff Lynne needed a vacation at that point (which turned out to be Xanadu). Maybe none of the followup albums (Time, Secret Messages, Balance of Power had anything to top "Don't Bring Me Down," but I think they all hold together better than Discovery.

Skimming 180+ posts, has anyone said Autoamerican?

― David Allan Cow (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 7 August 2012 18:45 (Yesterday)

Came here to post that. It's the perfect example of an album that I loved at the time, but in hindsight it's really weak.

spost "Shape of my Heart" and "The Call" are actually two of my favourite BSB singles though ("Shape of my Heart" is my absolute fave in fact).

The Call is probably the BSBs like, 3rd best song. But yeah that album counts

Tears for Fears, Seeds of Love

The Massacre is composed entirely of good album tracks and terrible singles.

Bone Thugs N Harmony's The Art Of War went 4x platinum but I haven't heard "Look Into My Eyes" or "If I Could Teach The World" since 97.

haha at this video, I sometimes forget how ambitious every rap video in the late 90s was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-DgZrIkw_Q

This song makes "The Crossroads" sound as hard as "Thuggish Ruggish Bone".

Not sure if it's been mentioned and it's an awful example but "Life" by Simply Red might fit the criteria. Followup to "Stars", a huge album with loads of singles on it, but "Life" had "Fairground" and er... Can't remember any others. But everyone (in the uk anyway) bought it. It's a charity shop regular now.

Suede-Head Music. Remember Virgin changed the name of their store to Head music the day it came out, there are now a million copies for sale on Amazon. I think their career was over when She's In Fashion didn't become the huge hit they were expecting.

The Corrs-In Blue. They were the biggest band in the UK in 98/99 and the first single from this album went straight to number one in 2000 but after that people just suddenly lost interest and they never recovered.

talking heads - little creatures

Nirvana - In Utero

Virtually every album that follows a smash ends up being a disappointment. Some then get reappraised
In 1980, Tusk would have been all over this thread.
In 1967, it would have been Smiley Smile.

Be Here Now definitely the best example in UK rock in the past 20 years. Though I like the upthread proposition of Welcome to the Pleasure Dome, since it was a victory lap for the singles, and it was staggeringly overblown and hollow and pompous. I remember some kid at our school writing a poem in anticipation for the photocopied school mag. "Then with joy I began to bubble/ It was going to be a double!" (I was not the poet; I just have a good memory.)

David Gray - A New Day at Midnight, apparently went quarduple platinum but I can't for the life of me remember how either of the singles go.

Have Queen ever had a NJ?

Queen's might have been "The Game", but then they came back with "The Works" a few years later and found a new audience, so maybe not.

Virtually every album that follows a smash ends up being a disappointment. Some then get reappraised

most, maybe, but not virtually every. sometimes the follow-up to a 1999 is a Purple Rain -- see artists who had a long streak of every album selling more than the last

Yeah, but then "Diamonds and Pearls" seems one of this.

oh i'm not saying Prince DOESN'T have one, just that he had quite a few smash hits before any real disappointment

Pet Shop Boys - Very

With Prince it might even be Lovesexy, but if not it's definitely Diamonds & Pearls.

If it's the big selling album that signals the end of the Imperial Phase then with REM it's Monster rather than Automatic or New Adventures.

Sometimes there's a plateauing album that might qualify - thinking of something like Bossanova here.

With Depeche Mode it's definitely 'Songs of Faith & Devotion'. Throw 'Republic' by New Order in there as well.

Just checked "everyhit", "Come" was Prince's last number one album (Uk).

Queen's is Hot Space, surely? Following The Game's big-hit diversification with diversification that alienated everyone

Throw 'Republic' by New Order in there as well.

yep

Pet Shop Boys - Very

this certainly doesn't sound hollow. It's many fans and critics' favorite record!

I'm sort of pinpointing that as the time they started to feel anachronistic.

hmmm...again, not the critical consensus. It's certainly true about Bilingual.

If Wile E. Coyote ever releases an album it'll be a New Jersey

xp That's not how Very seemed then or now. It outperformed Behaviour, and Go West is the PSBs hit for people who don't pay any attention to the PSBs.

Songs of Faith and Devotion for sure. All the Gahan drama behind the scenes added to the sense that the wheels were about to come off.