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

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.

well yeah i could probably hear a song, notice the repeated phrase and say "I'm guessing this is Boston because they have a song called Don't Look Back and this sounds like Boston saying 'Don't Look Back' a lot" but yeah I've never really dug into their work.

and further discussion of which multiplatinum w/ hits album from an established act was or wasn't an "event" will be met with "your mom's an event"

I could understand not knowing "Don't Look Back" but "More Than a Feeling" has to be one of the most-played songs on American rock radio. I don't believe that you only know it by name.

haha woops that IS a typo sorry. it's late!

Phew.

It's like the first thing identified as what's being discussed in the thread title. And it seemingly refers to albums that were "events" upon release as opposed to defining event as some long term thing when something becomes popular over time.

my point is that rather than have people say "gee that album didn't feel like a big deal to me," we're going to accept that a multiplatinum album with hits from an established artist was clearly an event to a good number of people.

besides, the lesser of the 33 albums will likely have goose eggs beneath the TRUE NEW JERSEYS when the poll is done

I think it's possible to argue that eight years away WAS a significant type of career decline even if they had a surprising comeback eight years later.

please tell me you just really want to vote for Don't Look Back being the Best New Jersey

No, it took a long time for them to do Don't Look Back and then I know they had legal troubles and that was part of why they didn't put out another record for a long time, but I don't know if it was the whole reason. Point being that Don't Look Back does feel like the album that signaled something significant with their career arc and not Third Stage.

alright i'm changing it to don't look back because i'm already being enough of a bossypants and i don't want people biting their pillows tonight but i'm going to be bummed if you hosers ignore it come voting time.

the current list o' 32, fair and true - will give it a night to see if someone has a brainflash or feels strongly that Butterfly is Mariah's New Jersey not Rainbow and then post the poll in the morning.

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)
Boston, Don't Look Back (7x platinum)
Guns'n'Roses, Use Your Illusion I & II (7x platinum each)
Creed, Weathered (6x 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)
Eminem, Encore (4x platinum)
Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, The Art Of War (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)
Hammer, Too Legit To Quit (3x platinum)
New Kids On The Block, Step By Step (3x platinum)
Nickelback, Dark Horse (3x platinum)

Wait, so did Dangerous not make it? I feel like it hits all the checkpoints here - ditto For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

Would also like to suggest Phil Collins's ...But Seriously, an 8x platinum followup to the 12x platinum No Jacket Required, featuring several moderate singles which haven't ever displaced the NJR hits in his canon and which have largely disappeared. (Unfortunate - "Something Happened On The Way To Heaven" is my favorite Collins solo joint!) Next album: down to single platinum, no big hits. The one after that (a late-coming attempt at a world-music crossover) merely made gold.

Pretty sure if the poll is for the "most New Jersey," Use Your Illusion is more NJ than NJ itself. But "best," now that's tricky. I guess I'm gonna have to start queuing all these records up in Spotify...

Third Stage probably didn't feel like an "event" because there were no videos for it--or at least none that MTV put on rotation. You probably had to be a FM Rock fan for it to feel eventful.

Third Stage was the first album I thought of here. Big "event" because of the 8-year wait, because "Amanda" had just topped the charts, because i remember how disappointed my Boston-t-shirt-wearing friend was when the full album was first played on the radio. And....

- brings with it the feeling that the NEXT record (if there is one) will see the bottom fall out (relatively speaking)
- brings with it the feeling that the NEXT record (if there is one) will see the bottom fall out (relatively speaking)
- brings with it the feeling that the NEXT record (if there is one) will see the bottom fall out (relatively speaking)
- brings with it the feeling that the NEXT record (if there is one) will see the bottom fall out (relatively speaking)
- brings with it the feeling that the NEXT record (if there is one) will see the bottom fall out (relatively speaking)

Wait, so did Dangerous not make it? I feel like it hits all the checkpoints here - ditto For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

Michael Jackson, like the Stones, has been saved by the "every album is an event" clause. You could say his decline was bad, dangerous, the second disc of History - it's all subjective as to when it was "a bit hollow" because all weren't thriller and all were events.

I don't think For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge works because the ones before and after basically sold as well, and they kept having mainstream rock #1s throughout. And if you want to play the "hollow" game, you could do it for any album once Hagar joins. And I'm sure everyone has their delightful opinion about when Van Hagar stopped being an "event."

Would also like to suggest Phil Collins's ...But Seriously, an 8x platinum followup to the 12x platinum No Jacket Required, featuring several moderate singles which haven't ever displaced the NJR hits in his canon and which have largely disappeared. (Unfortunate - "Something Happened On The Way To Heaven" is my favorite Collins solo joint!) Next album: down to single platinum, no big hits. The one after that (a late-coming attempt at a world-music crossover) merely made gold.

I dunno if you missed it, but Genesis' I Can't Dance has been on the list as the Phil pick for two days. Bottom dropped out after that, not But Seriously.

- brings with it the feeling that the NEXT record (if there is one) will see the bottom fall out (relatively speaking)

That's the thing - I'm worried

sorry, cut off.

I'm worried this is just becoming "the album after the biggest hit".

the one argument i will say in Dangerous's favor is that its sales were nearly equal to Bad in the US but then there was a pretty big drop to HIStory. but i can understand not including it.

i remember seeing, like, an MTV News segment about stores full of racks of unsold copies of HIStory due to demand being much lower than anticipated

Doctor, would you really consider BS' singles success as modest? Only "Hang in Long Enough" didn't make the top five.

ok made some adjustments

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)
Boston, Don't Look Back (7x platinum)
Michael Jackson, Dangerous (7x platinum)
Guns'n'Roses, Use Your Illusion I & II (7x platinum each)
Creed, Weathered (6x 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)
Mariah Carey, Butterfly (5x platinum)
R.E.M., Monster (4x platinum)
Eminem, Encore (4x platinum)
Phil Collins, ...But Seriously (4x platinum)
Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, The Art Of War (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)
Rod Stewart, Blondes Have More Fun (3x platinum)
Hammer, Too Legit To Quit (3x platinum)
New Kids On The Block, Step By Step (3x platinum)
Nickelback, Dark Horse (3x platinum)

Added Dangerous, and accepting But Seriously because the singles were huge but do have nothing on Invisible Touch and No Jacket Required, yes they still had We Can't Dance but they were now a huge adult contemporary band instead of THE pop act. still sticking with Encore for Eminem and I need some hard fucking evidence to put a Van Hagar album on here - 5150 is the one after the biggest hit, but commercially it signaled no decline. OU812 is the last one with a pop top ten, but FUCK had "Right Now", and they danced across the top spot of the Mainstream Rock Charts straight through to Cherone. Speak up if you have some concrete information, no more just mumbling about "events."

yeah, it doesn't feel like most of them have had the staying power of his earlier hits, aside from "Another Day In Paradise"

Tempted to put Van Hagar, like the Macca, into a clause where "buyers remorse" covers their whole fucking existence and they just kind of tapered off into slightly thinner oatmeal

lol yes

also switched Rainbow for Butterfly - the previous album Daydream had "Fantasy," "One Sweet Day" and "Always Be My Baby", Butterfly had "Honey," "Butterfly" and "My All." Big hits but they definitely feel like New Jersey's to the previous titans (remember the "Honey" video with Mariah escaping Tommy Vitola and giving Ma$e a lap dance?). Admittedly the following album, Rainbow, had two #1s but the bloom was pretty clearly off the rose, and in hindsight, I think Butterfly is the "signal" album

lol Tommy Mottola

"Butterfly" is the one of the worst fucking songs in the world; I think that's the point where I stopped anticipating new Mariah singles, hoping they would be great, and starting dreading new Mariah singles, expecting them to be terrible

although that could have also happened at "One Sweet Day", now that I think about it

Bon Jovi, New Jersey (7x platinum)

^^^ starting to think maybe this should be on here, after all it spawned two hot 100 #1s and the followup album hit #1 on the finnish charts!

er, should not be on here

dammit spoiled my own cutting satire

it's not all sales or charts or singles guys....a "New Jersey" is a *feeling* too

― Elrond Hubbard (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:35 PM Bookmark

really want to push this angle... because I really agree with da croupier that this shouldn't just be "the biggest album after the biggest hit"...but that's why I think two parts of the definition which are subjective are really crucial - - - the "event" label (which I agree should be broad) which for me largely stands in for "this thing actually was seen as successful, not just having big sales in the first week on momentum and then tapering off" - - - and the whole "ultimately feels hollow" which can be unpacked in a variety of ways but might include (a) the later shelf life of its onetime hits (b) buyer's remorse/wider shift in the zeitgeist's evaluation of the album (c) related, shift in the artist's narrative that now sees them as on the decline and therefore looks for "where it all started to go wrong"...

So basically this is just me lobbying for Dangerous and But Seriously which already made the list anyway. Convinced the list is somehow incomplete without Van Hagar, even if one says their entire career is a NJ perhaps there is still an album which signals the shift towards people realizing it's a
NJ...and perhaps that album itself is a NJ...makes u think....

Fatboy Slim - Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars is another one, maybe FBS was never really "huge" per se but that was the "wait, why did we make such a big deal out of this guy" momen

agree! for some reason late 90s electronica feels especially prone to new jerseyism to me. i will add

basement jaxx - kish kash
daft punk - human after all (even though this came out wayyy after discovery, their popularity was insane at that pt as i remember it!)
chemical brothers - come with us(???)
moby - 18 (but maybe there was too much of a break after play and the momentum had died already?)

for debate

i dont think air has a new jersey because they just stopped being all that popular when 10.000hz came out. at least that's how it feels, i don't know any of the figures

ok between the glow sticks coming out dr. casino falling down the van hagar wormhole (sticking to my Wings clause, sorry - "when did you realize van hagar sucks" probably deserves its own thread), I'm moving this shit to poll time.

BEST/MOST "BON JOVI'S NEW JERSEY" ALBUM EVER

xpost Most of those didn't sell anywhere near the numbers of the albums currently populating the list, though.

awwwwwright then!

But Seriously being on here seems kinda wrong to me but I think that might be UK vs US perspective.

oh yeah THIS IS ENTIRELY BASED ON US SALES. Plus every damn album has paragraphs about its selection on the other thread.

lol wait sorry i'm getting my threads confused - thought this was the poll one. sorry!

xp yeah i guess they fail in the popularity stakes for general pop, but they were massive 'within' genre

Yeah, sorry, I get that it's a US-centric thread, I wasn't saying it shouldn't be on the list, just I'd be more in the Genesis I Can't Dance camp on that one.

this all happened while i was asleep in america but dude, it is Third Stage, not Don't Look Back.

1. "Don't Look Back" and "Feelin' Satisfied" remain songs that you think about when you think about Boston, "Amanda" and "Cool The Engines" do not.
2. I was there and yes, it was a big deal that Boston, who people thought were through, came back with another album. It was a "make sure to buy it the day it comes out" kind of record for 70s rock types.
3. I wasn't there for Don't Look Back but I do NOT think it presaged anything about Boston's commercial and artistic decline. I think it basically sounds like the s/t. Whereas Third Stage comes out in this very different sonic environment, and you buy it, and you bring it home, and at first you're like "I don't believe it, after all these years, new Boston songs, and they sound just like what I want them to sound like" but then 5 mins later you're like "you know what, somehow I'm not as into this sound as I used to be" and you feel a sort of emptiness and a visceral sense of the world fading away behind you even though you are only 15 and THAT IS WHY IT IS THIRD STAGE

yeah i regret replacing third stage. ah well, may the ghost of brad delp forgive me.

FUCK had "Right Now", and they danced across the top spot of the Mainstream Rock Charts straight through to Cherone.

Perhaps switch out F.U.C.K. with Balance? That is if anyone remembers that shit-fest...

I think it basically sounds like the s/t

It basically sounds like the s/t but ... it's less memorable except for the big hit, which has nowhere near the presence of the bigger hits from the debut. (Da croup doesn't even know it and he's a pretty serious rock listener!) 6 songs from the debut still get significant airplay. Not the case with Don't Look Back.

I mean, "I'll Be There for You" is still a song people think about when they think of Bon Jovi, even people who hate them.