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

re: "Matter of Trust," just put it on to check it out - - - can't say as I've ever heard this before, ever. Kind of striking though. Not what I imagined The Bridge sounding like at all.

river of dreams is staying unless someone can actually contradict that it was a big album that ultimately was a bit hollow and signaled a career decline.

the reasoning again: (5x platinum #1 album with 2 top 20 hits, including the #3 title track. Billy's previous album, Storm Front, had 2 top 10 hits including a #1, but only went 4x platinum. However, "We Didn't Start The Fire" is a notch above "River" on Spotify, "The Downeaster Alexa" several notches above "Lullaby - Goodnight Angel" and about half of Storm Front passes before we see "All About Soul". His only follow-up has been a classical album.)

also storm front has "shameless" - a big hit for Garth Brooks, and "and so it goes" was covered on an American Idol top 3 episode.

Guess my thinking is just that River of Dreams sold really well without being an "event" album - the #3 title track is the only impact it made on the wider culture, despite the high sales for the album itself, which feels like some kind of incipient Adult Contemporary buying pattern or something - - - selling a buttload of copies of something to people who aren't really watching MTV or following the unfolding of "events" even if they were being staged. I feel like NJ's really need that sense of one single after another being spun off to at least passable acclaim, keeping the album in the headlines and on TV for at least a year and more like two. Am I way off?

do we have a thread about acts doing the same song multiple times in the same concert? Jay-Z and Kanye doing "Gwyneth Paltrow In Paris" 8 times in a row or whatever was just appalling.

I feel like NJ's really need that sense of one single after another being spun off to at least passable acclaim, keeping the album in the headlines and on TV for at least a year and more like two. Am I way off?

we have to prune a good bit of shit on the list for this standard, starting with Black & Blue. The broader idea is that the album was undeniably successful - some prove it by huuuge numbers, others by multiple hits.

Celine Dion, Let's Talk About Love is totally a New Jersey. (x-post)

The broader idea is that the album was undeniably successful - some prove it by huuuge numbers, others by multiple hits.

^^^ okay - - - I buy this.

Celine Dion, Let's Talk About Love is totally a New Jersey. (x-post)

― LeRooLeRoo, Thursday, August 9, 2012 5:51 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

the funny thing about the 33 1/3 book is that after he basically admits that it's "about" that album merely because of the Titanic song he starts to realize, that isn't even her really big album aside from that song

lol it's definitely going in, then.

will admit that I think albums with multiple hit singles are more apt to win Best New Jersey - it's a more impressive feat, suggests more active fans of your filler

so i think i'm gonna add four of the five i brought up - whitney gets a save because it seems like are pretty happy with that album, a genuine triumph rather than riding on fumes.

Garth Brooks, Sevens (10x platinum)
Celine Dion, Let's Talk About Love (10x platinum)
Backstreet Boys, Black & Blue (8x platinum)
Bon Jovi, New Jersey (7x platinum)
Eagles, The Long Run (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)
Mariah Carey, Heartbreaker (3x platinum)
Huey Lewis, Fore! (3x platinum)
Foreigner, Agent Provocateur (3x platinum)
Rod Stewart, Blondes Have More Fun (3x platinum)
New Kids On The Block, Step By Step (3x platinum)

that's 29 - would like to make it a solid 30 before posting a poll tomorrow.

ha if we can't think of anything i'll add Jewel

will seriously go back through the thread and my collection in a little bit, take another stab

the trick is to listen to them

Still think one of the INXS albums mentioned should be in there - but I think X rather than Welcome To Wherever You Are.

you guys

Creed, Weathered
6x platinum

two top 10 hits

preceded by 11x platinum Human Clay
followed by gold-at-best side projects

they just recently did concerts playing the two albums before this in entirety back-to-back
no weathered tour announced

INXS went straight to single platinum after Kick

i only held my tongue on Creed cause of the breakup and lowered expectations reunion that followed

btw Nickelback's Dark Horse cleared 3 mil, should be on the master list imo

yeah i can see that - looks like they hammered what they could into the top 40 over a long-ass time with far less success than the previous album, and the follow-up couldn't get anything in there. will add, guess we're at 31.

Despite the remarkable (esp. in the '00s) success of "All the Right Reasons," the follow-up never felt like an "event album" to me. Then again, Nickelback albums never seem to debut to a lot of fanfare; the aforementioned album was almost a sleeper smash, a record that sold in the mega-millions over two or three years because it spun off a fuckload of radio readymades over a long period of time and not because it struck a nerve at any one point. Which I guess speaks well of mass taste. But Mutt Lange made them almost listenable and who gave a shit then?

i'm a little wary of people putting too much import into something "event album" - we're all deep enough into our niches that it's rather personal a perspective. We're all seasoned music fans here so it's real easy for us to not think an album is a big deal. But any album that sold north of 3x platinum and/or had a bunch of pop hits was pretty clearly an event to some degree, to some mainstream niche.

yeah i think to an extent it's enough that the industry treated an album like an event whether or not the public really perceived it that way

everything here is an album a lot of people bought from an artist who'd already enjoyed massive success - that's event plenty.

mc hammer and vanilla ice seemed to be dismissed upthread as one-album wonders who by definition can't have a new jersey moment but if spiceworld makes the final cut, then why not too legit to quit?

i think m@tt made a good point that VIce doesn't really count but Hammer prob does

lol i remember the word hammer coming up but it wasn't until you wrote Too Legit To Quit out - first time it's been mentioned by name - that I actually remembered that album and not just please hammmer don't hurt 'em. soooo included, really glad it came up specifically now. Thank you!

ha ha, welcome!

If Third Stage was Boston's New Jersey, are you saying that Don't Look Back was their Slippery When Wet? Clearly, the first s/t album was their SWW, right?

(why I nominated Don't Look Back originally)

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

― da croupier, Thursday, 9 August 2012 16:38 (Yesterday) Permalink

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

― da croupier, Thursday, 9 August 2012 16:39 (Yesterday) Permalink

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?

― mr.raffles, Thursday, 9 August 2012 16:41 (Yesterday)

Didn't the "Cream" single get a major bump when Billboard switched to Soundscan sales figures while it was climbing the Hot 100 chart? I seem to remember hearing that the song wouldn't have reached #1 under Billboard's old sales reporting system.

(But I mean I wasn't there: maybe the hype was really intense for Third Stage as an event album.)

The too legit to quit video was a huge event

If Third Stage was Boston's New Jersey, are you saying that Don't Look Back was their Slippery When Wet? Clearly, the first s/t album was their SWW, right?

it's more about the end of a run than that they literally only had two big hit albums.

Since some of the stuff appears to gets a little close to fairweather johnson territory, I'll note that only three albums are actual sophomore albums, and all had 3 or more top 20 hits on then. The rest all had at least two platinum records to their credit before their "new jersey."

3 or more top 20 hits on them, i mean.

so basically none of the 33 or so albums listed were an immediate flop follow-up to a flash in the pan

I move that third stage be replaced with don't look back

(Seconded)

weird to think BJ (lol) had 2 pre-Slippery albums, but of course "Runaway" is a classic.

will just repost the logic for third stage

(4x platinum #1 album with two top ten hits including one #1, despite coming eight years after the last album. However, in 1987, Boston had gone 9x platinum, Don't Look Back 4x platinum and Third Stage 4x time platinum. Today, Boston is at 17x platinum, and Don't Look Back is at 7x platinum. Third Stage remains at four, and the follow-up, Walk On only went Platinum).

saying Don't look back is a new jersey kind of ignores that they not only failed to have a career decline but were actually able to just show up and say HAY eight years later and have a #1.

Has anyone ever heard 7800 Fahrenheit?

no. the guy who mixed it did it with the monitors off

Speaking of Boston, does anyone have access to back issues of Musician Magazine? (I'm pretty sure it was Musician. Maybe Trouser Press, but I doubt it.) Their vicious review of Don't Look Back was one of my favorite.

i did see this awesome, awesome video from it on a Bon Jovi video retrospective my library supervisor taped off MTV (along with Bowie's Glass Spider special!) that I discovered when housesitting for her in the early '00s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U6Y4xSa0HY

Yeah, I know that one single from it but that's all I've ever heard.

I see your logic with Third Stage. Don't Look Back does feel pretty hollow to me except for the title track, though, more so than NJ, in fact. (Quick: name another song from it.)

well i only know "more than a feeling" by name anyway, but it's probably more surprising i don't know any of the 3 pop hits off Third Stage than that I don't know any of the 70s radio stuff off DLB.

well i only know "more than a feeling" by name anyway

Either this is a typo or you're not the man I thought you were!

actually able to just show up and say HAY eight years later and have a #1.

Yeah, I'm not sure that Third Stage was that big of an event either and that the success of "Amanda" and the album wasn't due to its own breakthrough.