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

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?

They're horrible singles but no more so than Adrenalize, and bigger (three went Gold!). However, when the follow-up came around the bloom was definitely off the rose. He's pushed 3x platinum out of Recovery and will always be Rap's Elvis right to Vegas, but he definitely lost some luster after Encore. I'm going to include that as a sop to the Shady-haters.

Be Here Now would be a New Jersey in the UK, but in the US it only went platinum. Definitely a fairweather johnson here.

dangit, i was trying to push Encore as Fairweather Johnson, oops

Eminem's arc has a kink in it because of the 4-5 year "retirement"; granted acts often go that long between albums anyway, but Relapse didn't really feel like "the followup to Encore," it was the comeback album....with Recovery being the actual comeback album where suddenly he's a huge-selling name again.

the release of the "Mosh" video just before the 2004 election felt like an event (stupid as that may seem in retrospect)

comeback album or not, Relapse did really badly and the fact that Encore was an ass platter probably didn't help

I don't think No Need To Argue is a New Jersey. The album was a hit in its own right, not because it was riding on it's predecessor's success. And "Zombie" is ten times better remembered than "Linger".

not on ilx!

I thought Zombie was remembered on ILX as the high-water mark of horrible music.

I was debating No Need To Argue - it may be the only album listed that did better than the previous one - but people really do hate it here and the follow-up was a yeargh drop. If everyone loves it they can vote for it as the Best New Jersey and shame "Zombie"-phobes.

Things I didn't forsee myself doing today - searching 'Eminem discography' on wikipedia.

But where Rattle & Hum and Be Here Now fail the test is that they were exposed as steaming piles almost immediately. A true New Jersey keeps going, like Wile E. Coyote off his cliff, until the collective realisation much later.

the release of the "Mosh" video just before the 2004 election felt like an event (stupid as that may seem in retrospect)

― Euler, Thursday, August 9, 2012 11:20 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol 52 professional critics were so desperate for a political moment in pop music that they put "Mosh" on their Pazz & Jop ballots

But where Rattle & Hum and Be Here Now fail the test is that they were exposed as steaming piles almost immediately. A true New Jersey keeps going, like Wile E. Coyote off his cliff, until the collective realisation much later.
Yeah this is actually a fair point. My memory may be faulty but with Be Here Now I don't even remember the singles getting much radio play with the exception of Stand By Me (they still charted fairly well though).

it's been mentioned upthread but there was a pretty sharp divide with Be Here Now being initially pretty successful in the UK but not so much in the US. although i did see the goddamn "All Around The World" video on MTV quite a lot.

Lol All Around The World was such a steaming pile, totally fits that hollow, bloated vibe we've been discussing here.

wasn't it used in a commercial a few years ago?

ok so actually does anyone mind if I take out No Need To Argue? I think my judgement may have been clouded by the anti-"Zombie" bile on here, it's not like Cranberries fans per se have obvious beef with it, could definitely be argued To The Faithfully Departed (which still sold 2x platinum) was their Fairweather Johnson.

In the US, I feel like there was maybe a two-month period where you would hear "D'ya Know What I Mean" and "Don't Go Away" in not-very-heavy rotation, and then they just disappeared. I heard "Don't Go Away" at the grocery store earlier this year and was kind of floored like, how did that make the playlist?

A Be Here Now is probably its own shorthand already, right? For a massively anticipated album that just disappoints everyone from the word go, incredibly negative critical consensus, sense that success has gone to the band's heads. Fairweather Johnsons just miss the moment and fade into the night, Be Here Nows suck and everybody knows it.

xpost i kinda like "all around the world" tho

keeping Rattle & Hum cuz some people obviously want it, plus fuck U2

BHN got spectacular reviews in England iirc

The level of hubris around Oasis was so great in 1997 that everyone who reviewed it convinced themselves it was a classic and then got very embarrassed when they'd calmed down a bit.