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

sales figures being used are US-centric

yeah i'm seeing around the world in a day at 3x platinum, diamonds at 2x platinum in US sales

Is there a 'Secret Life of Plants'-style release thread? Insane left-turns are fun!

rejoice, prince lovers!

So I checked the RIAA site myself and couldn't find a 3x platinum trophy for the album. I googled and billboard also claims that the album only went double-platinum. So it looks like someone typo'd on wikipedia and Around The World In A Day is not eligible.

though someone should definitely do a poll of the prince albums that have hit double platinum (1999 and purple rain are the only to go further)

"Around the World in a Day" (1985), 2-times Platinum
"Diamonds and Pearls" (1991), 2-times Platinum
"Emancipation" (1996), 2-times Platinum
"Batman (soundtrack)" (1989), 2-times Platinum
"Musicology" (2004), 2-times Platinum

notable one of those is a 3CD and another was given away with concert tickets

and Batman was helped by the movie and Around the World by Purple Rain.

Diamonds as the only one to get there under its own steam?

more like under its own...cream

it's kind of amazing considering the man managed at least one top ten hit every year from 1983-1994

oh wait no 1993, but still

N.B. - people fuck with certification info on artists' Wikipedia pages all the time, usually inflating certs by 1 to 2 million. I'm kind of a geek about this stuff, so I'd advise anyone citing these numbers to check the RIAA database instead: http://riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?content_selector=gold-platinum-searchable-database

Just for instance, ATWIAD is 2x Platinum (tying it with D&P and Batman), Some Girls is 6x Platinum, Encore is 4x Platinum (though if you check Soundscan, which measures actual sales rather than shipments minus returns, it has indeed sold over 5 million copies in the U.S.).

See I was beaten to the punch on Prince, but my point stands.

didn't "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" peak in early '94?

cool, i'll go through the lot xpost re RIAA

Prince's Cream Steam.

Said elsewhere but the whole 1985-1988 album decline* thing is bizarre, like Purple Rain never happened

Obviously not in terms of quality..

xp - "Most Beautiful Girl" hit in early '94, yeah, but due probably to his dispute with Warner Bros. the Gold Experience didn't come out until a year and a half later, far too late to capitalize on the single's momentum. Emancipation was a 3 disc set, so its cert is artificially inflated by its bulk - it actually Soundscanned less than 700k copies, a considerable disappointment given that it was designed as his post-WB comeback record.

So here's the updated list. Only thing that had to be changed was Encore going from 5x plat to 4x.

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)
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)
Eminem, Encore (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)

xp - I still don't understand how "Sign O' The Times" could spin off 3 top 10 singles but stall at platinum.

maybe people saw a "room full of psychedelic crap" cover and a 2LP price and said FOOL ME ONCE, PRINCE. FOOL ME ONCE.

kind of a shame that the album that inspired this whole convo gets excluded by the sales barometer, Born This Way definitely fits the archetype aside from arriving well after triple platinum became almost as rare as diamond used to be.

Probably for the best - it also inspired a lot of disagreement about whether it actually had that role in her narrative or not! I'd concede, now, that it's way too soon to say with any confidence what the real impact will be.

it still amazes me that Carter 4 managed to sell well over half of what Carter 3 sold, nobody's going to remember any of those songs within a couple years.

Apologies if this has been said before, but how about the Bjork album with an iPhone app for every song?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rjgo31Zm1qml812o7_r1_250.gif

I feel like Kiss must have had one of these, but the sales numbers for their big albums seem ridiculously low.

kiss's impressive numbers were always in tour receipts and merch revenue

what's JBJ saying there?

BWWWAAAAAIIII *grins*

side note, how rich is Jon Bon Jovi? How happy is he that he has all that New Jersey money lining the coffers? I would kill to put out a New Jersey myself, credibility and artistic purity be damned. I could pay off all my debt and go out for ice cream every day of the week!

I'm more interested in learning how much, say, Ric Ocasek has in his mattress: one of those guys who'll leave a $100-million estate.

eh i think the guys who peaked before the late '80s have wildly divergent fortunes based on how well they invested (or indulged) in their later years. i kinda doubt Ocasek has a ton of cash sitting around. JBJ is definitely loaded, though.

Annual earnings according to FORBES: 2012: 60 Million , 2011: $125 Million Founder and lead singer of Bon Jovi,has an estimated net worth of $125 million. He gained fame in the mid-1980s as the lead singer of the hard-rock band Bon Jovi, whose albums Slippery When Wet and New Jersey became multi-platinum sellers

i bet tico torres is sitting on a bigger nest egg than ocasek

Wait, he's worth $125 million and that's also how much he made last year? Must have been a real relief when that check came in...

some more possibilties. Not swearing any deserve to match the 25 but throwing them out for consideration.

Mariah Carey, Heartbreaker (3x platinum, 2 #1 hits - "Heartbreaker" and "Thank God I Found You". Follow-ups would fail to go multi-platinum until Emancipation of Mimi)

Celine Dion, Let's Talk About Love (10x platinum, but notably no hot 100 chart action aside from THE SONG, where the previous English-language album, Falling Into You, had three top 5 hits. The next english-language full length, A New Day has Come would only go 3x platinum and the biggest song would hit #22. Though she did have two top ten hits in between albums, the R. Kelly duet and a greatest hits track)

Whitney Houston, My Love Is Your Love (4x platinum, 3 top 5 hits and top 20 duet with Mariah. Follow-up only went platinum. I wasn't listening to pop radio much when this came out, so this might be a Bad and I just don't realize the songs are jams radios still rock today.)

Eagles, The Long Run (7x platinum #1 album, 3 top 10 hits including a #1. While the Eagles reunions would be huge, Don and Glenn's solo debuts would only go gold and it's sort of thin compared to Hotel California.)

Rod Stewart, Blondes Have More Fun (3x platinum #1 album, and his last chart-topper until the Songbook and his last multi-platinum until Out Of Order almost a decade later. Admittedly not that much more hollow than the previous album, Foot Loose & Fancy Free)

also notable re: Blondes is that Foot Loose & Fancy Free only went 2x platinum but has two songs that still get play, "Hot Legs" and "You're In My Heart" while Blondes only has 'D'ya Think I'm Sexy?')

Eagles might be worthy - I don't recognize either of the singles that aren't the title track, but apparently they were big hits?

Wait, he's worth $125 million and that's also how much he made last year? Must have been a real relief when that check came in...

haha

Yeah I agree with taking out No Need To Argue - I think that's when a large part of the group's fanbase discovered them. I feel like one important quality of a New Jersey is the sense of market saturation, where the album (initially) soaks up everyone already on-board but isn't by itself interesting or different enough to open up a new audience.

I keep thinking The Long Run will be the album to destroy my Eagles odium.

Blondes Have More Fun is a good one.

xpost Maybe it will.... in the extended sweep of time.

I could be wrong, but 'My Love is Your Love,' after the slightly under-performing pop hits of "Waiting to Exhale" and "Preacher's Wife," felt more like a comeback than anything to me.

Celine seems pretty otm. Something about huge crossover hits not feeling as guaranteed seems Jersey-esque. Or maybe post-Jersey-esque.

The Preacher's Wife soundtrack is where Whitney sounded hollow.

Atomic Bomb is so recent though (in my warped perception of time), and I don't really keep up with U2 fans and their discourse - - what's the C.W. on it at this point?

― Doctor Casino

U2 still plays a few of these cuts in concert, i mean 'vertigo' and 'city of blinding lights' are huge w/the fans and live they're certainly "impressive" but not especially thrilling. for whatever reason the last album is regarded as the more disappointing one. real headz know that horizon >>>> atomic bomb though.

Whereas ILX's No Line on the Horizon is its Slippery When Wet.

'City Of Blinding Lights' is the shit imo

i'm sure bon jovi still plays at least two tracks from new jersey in live shows too, and that's almost twenty years older. but new jersey is no slippery when wet and atomic bomb is no all you can leave behind.

COBL is pretty good but my favorite U2 cut from their last three is still 'breathe', which actually opened their rose bowl show.