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

Agreed on Rattle and Hum being necessary. Not LEAST for inspiring the Most Legendarily Horrible Piece of Writing On Rock Ever:

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-11-20/entertainment/ca-441_1_rock-band

I read this in fall quarter of freshman year at UCLA, having just moved to Los Angeles for the first time, and immediately learned to mistrust anything Hilburn claimed. This served me well.

...we probably do have to actually poll New Jersey the album at some point, but i don't think i'm ready for that point to arrive. BTW GUESS WHO HAS GODDAMN BAD MEDICINE IN HIS HEAD AGAIN

I'm not sure I'll have space for anything in my head again

Did we even talk about the video? With Sam Kinison and forced cinema verite?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOUtsybozjg

And hair, let us not forget the hair.

U2 has shown a tendency to listen to criticism. For example, there has been occasional grumbling--even from critics and fans who greatly admire U2's work--that the band's high-idealed tales of social conscience and responsibility sometimes gave the impression of a holier-than-thou attitude. Lead singer Hewson, who writes the band's lyrics, stressed repeatedly in interviews in recent years that he was not the man of virtue and honor outlined in such songs as "Pride (In the Name of Love).

Honor (In the Name of Virtue)

In the album's most naked moment, Hewson sings about the struggle of musicians (or all artists) who have to keep reaching deeper and deeper inside themselves for truths.

oh god.

"They may . . . pull off the feat of getting B.B. back on the Top 40 for the first time in a couple of decades and they've surely re-established blues as the musical center of modern rock, which is a prerequisite for restoring a sense of center to pop music and its offshoots."

Don't you tell me what is and isn't a prerequisite, David Marsh!

always dug Neil Tennant's response:

"What [rock critics} basically want is for it to be like 1969 again. It's this thing where British – or in U2's case, Irish – groups discover the roots of American music. U2 have discovered this and they're just doing pastiches [his voice rises] and it's reviewed as a serious thing because DYLAN PLAYS ORGAN on some song and B.B. King plays on some throwaway pop song "When Love Comes to Town" that could have been written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It could be in 'Starlight Express' if you ask me."

pull off the feat of getting B.B. back on the Top 40 for the first time in a couple of decades

um, BB had top 40 hits in the 70s and "Love Comes To Town" only made it to #68

Bono's Most Naked Moment, on a stool in Vegas

brilliant Tennant quote.

xpost -- That puts all kinds of wrong images in my head.

a No Bono Stool sign spotted in Vegas:

http://www.wormsandgermsblog.com/no-dog-poop-zone-sign-thumb3238487.jpg

what's with the naked stools lately

"Live Real Bonos!"

blame max

A thousand naked Bono impersonators behind him as he comes to sing his smooth-jazz version of "The Real Bono Vox"...

i'd say Merriweather Post Pavillion, which was a relatively huge event in the indiesphere

This is a thread about the real world.

That is a terrible terrible article, Ned. Thanks! I haven't laughed so much in ages. "Rattle and hum" was a HUGE event in the UK. I can remember a week or so before it came out, some DJ was doing a Radio One roadshow OB from somewhere and was interviewing a lorry driver. "So, what's in the lorry?" asked the DJ. "Thousands of copies of the new U2 album" the driver replied. The DJ and OB audience gave a small collective gasp, as if this driver was carrying the ark of the covenant. It was an EVENT.

some throwaway pop song "When Love Comes to Town" that could have been written by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Tennant seems not to understand that this is a very high standard of pop songcraft!

I want to say that Andrew Lloyd Webber's New Jersey is Starlight Express, but that might require pretending that Phantom of the Opera doesn't exist.

so if it's cool with Upper Miss - since he's the one who came up with this concept - I'd like to put up a poll tomorrow containing the albums I listed plus Rattle & Hum, Adrenalize, How To Build An Atomic Bomb and Step By Step. If anyone can think up an album that went at least 3x platinum in the US (and don't assume it did, because you're probably wrong, especially if it came out after 2000) that also fits the description, please offer it up.

Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water?

Don De Lillo's New Jersey = Underworld.

and actually, as much as I love the hits on 50 Cent's The Massacre I can definitely see the argument so I'll throw that on too.

xpost i really don't have a sense that fans are like 'nookie roolz, rollin' droolz' but what the hey it's not like we have the space.

not like we don't, i mean

Fore! and Afterburner def gives me flashbacks to when I saw Columbia House ads in rock magazines.

i'll also throw on Seger's Against The Wind, at worst we'll have people debating the merits of late '70s early '80s seger singles and it will get 2 votes.

The list so far:

Garth Brooks, Sevens (10x platinum)
Backstreet Boys, Black & Blue (8x platinum)
Bon Jovi, New Jersey (7x platinum)
Guns'n'Roses, Use Your Illusion I & II (7x platinum each)
Cranberries, No Need To Argue (7x platinum)
Limp Bizkit, Chocolate Starfish & The Hot Dog Flavored Water (6x platinum)
Journey, Frontiers (6x platinum)
ZZ Top, Afterburner (5x platinum)
50 Cent, The Massacre (5x platinum)
U2, Rattle & Hum (5x platinum)
Billy Joel, River Of Dreams (5x platinum)
Bob Seger, Against The Wind (5x platinum)
R.E.M., Monster (4x platinum)
Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, The Art Of War (4x platinum)
Boston, Third Stage (4x platinum)
Genesis, We Can't Dance (4x platinum)
AC/DC, For Those About To Rock We Salute You (4x platinum)
Lionel Richie, Dancing On The Ceiling (4x platinum)
Spice Girls, Spiceworld (4x platinum)
U2, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (3x platinum)
Paula Abdul, Spellbound (3x platinum)
Def Leppard, Adrenalize (3x platinum)
Huey Lewis, Fore! (3x platinum)
Foreigner, Agent Provocateur (3x platinum)
New Kids On The Block, Step By Step (3x platinum)

The Eminem Show (8x platinum, I think)

nice work! gonna have to go back through the thread today and see if anything jumps out...

we discusses this earlier, but the album before "Lose Yourself" and 8 Mile did not signal a career decline

maybe artistically, but not commercially

Yeah, but the album before Encore did. I think it counts anyway on virtue of "hugely successful album that nobody rates very highly at this point." "Lose Yourself" is basically an errant data point in Eminem's career arc, right? My sense of the CW at this point is "Peaked with Marshall Mathers LP" but I'd have to read some Eminem threads in detail to corroborate that.

Encore still sold 5x platinum, and in the mid '00s. Eminem Show didn't "have a movie!" the movie came after and it was a big fucking hit. Eminem Show is like Bad where it wasn't Thriller but it was enormous and the guy kept being enormous so haters stop hating.

I still think Atomic is more of a New Jersey than Rattle & Hum, but the latter at least has the whiff of embarrassment. Eminem never said sorry about anything until Relapse.

he said sorry to his mama in "Cleanin' Out My Closet."

i don't think he really meant it though

did not signal a career decline
This is the main reason that Rattle & Hum feels a slightly awkward fit to me - the fact that they followed it up very successfully with Achtung Baby (albeit with quite a bit of a change in sound and image). It def fits in terms of an album that sold well and was a Big Deal at the time but is largely forgotten/ignored now though.

Yeah, I think I've generally been more interested in the "ultimately feels a bit hollow" than the "signals a career decline" aspect of the New Jersey - just how much an album's narrative position can reverse as a result of larger things (shift in taste, shift in fanbase, band's metanarrative, radio format stuff, and yeah, subsequent career decline). But that's me trying to rewrite the definition so maybe Eminem Show doesn't count really.

If the Eminem Show doesn't count then Encore definitely does.

xpost to myself in that way it's perhaps comparable to The Great Escape by Blur - albums that despite performing well led to a realisation that the 'more of what you love' approach had run its course and that there was a need to go back to the drawing board for the next record.
Be Here Now by Oasis is a bona-fide, gold-standard New Jersey though.

I think Encore might actually be closer to Eminem's Fairweather Johnson.

Don De Lillo's New Jersey = Underworld.

OTM!

more on Encore - Like, I was going to just say "the hell, everyone hated that album and it flopped totally" but checking Wiki, nope, damn thing did 5x platinum in the US... but the singles were frighteningly unsuccessful for a top-tier artist. Chart peaks: Just Lose It (#6), Encore (#25), Like Toy Soldiers (#34), Mockingbird (#11), Ass Like That (#60).

Like, "Mockingbird" aside (side note, I don't remember this song at all), that's the story of an album that had strong momentum going in, enough to push a weak first single into the top ten for a second, and then the wheels came off.

yeah Encore should be in there imo

i mean has an album ever sold so much with the artist telegraphing "i don't like doing this anymore and i'm hoping you stop making me" so clearly?