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

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.

I own the album and I can't remember "Feeling Satisfied" btw.

COME ON LET ME GIVE YOUR MIND A RIDE

Fwiw: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/boston/id60960

Three songs from the debut AND "AMANDA" place higher than "Don't Look Back", then three more songs from the debut appear before "Feelin' Satisfied". Admittedly, the album version and GH version of "Don't Look Back" are counted separately, which might make a difference.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/bon-jovi/id122782

I forgot that the real follow up to New Jersey was the JBJ solo Young Guns II soundtrack with monster hit "Blaze of Glory." That was his "Lose Yourself" I guess.

admittedly i forgot about it, but whether the follow-up was the 2x platinum Keep The Faith or the 2x platinum concept album about an emilio estevez movie, the narrative works well enough

It's too late now, guys, but what about Gloria Estefan's Cuts Both Ways? A massive hit (3x platinum) that consolidated her gains (a #1 single, another top ten, and the #11 "Get On Your Feet") but a couple of others that grazed the top fifty. The followup managed a #1 because of public sympathy for her accident but only one other top thirty ("Live For Loving You").

*as a result of her accident

Haven't contributed anything to this thread, but, sparked by another thread, an obvious one just occurred to me: the Ramones' End of the Century. It got the lead review in Rolling Stone (something that possibly happened with Rocket to Russia, but I doubt it), it was their highest-charting album, it was a big story because of Spector's involvement, and--though not a bad record--it was nowhere near as good as the previous four, and they would never again return to where they were before the album came out. They would go on to have well reviewed albums again, most noticeably Too Tough to Die, but by then they were playing catch-up.

It wasn't a multiplatinum event album though...

Yeah, ''End of the Century''s could almost be a category in themselves - albums where, after years of patient hard work, a band finally gets their big break...right as their creative powers flag, or they take on a new direction/sound, anyway it's just straight not as good as everything that came before. The big break doesn't pay off and they're hobbled forever.

Obviously hard to detach this from, you know, their new big label making them change their sound and so on, but...

Okay..."multiplatinum" isn't in the thread title, and believe me, it did qualify as something of an event at the time (hence the lead RS} review), but I'm jumping in after 1,000 posts, so I'm sure I would have picked up on that had I been closely following.

Yeah, now that the poll is out there I feel we can be less rigid here about nj equivalents that didn't chart/sell as well, and ones by cult acts

Why were we being rigid about it in the first place?

We had to honor the jovi

Belle and Sebastian, THE LIFE PURSUIT

Now that it's safe to do cult artists again- how about Morrissey? He must have had at least one "New Jersey".

for cult New Jerseys, you can just look at the last in a stretch of pazz'n'jop placements, rather than the last in a stretch of multi-platinum

shame cmj doesn't have a working archive

haha, life pursuit is like the only belle and sebastian album i listen to, maybe i should give new jersey another chance

Bush's Razorblade Suitcase

Lol, yeah, I still don't think making an analogy to the relative legacies of Bon Jovi albums works so great for cult artists.

"Man, at the 80s prom in my heart, 'Lycanthrope' was totally Thinking Plague's 'Livin' on a Prayer' and 'Love' was their 'Never Say Goodbye'. So disappointing to see them slip into New Jersey territory with In Extremis. I don't see anyone transcribing 'This Weird Wind' 14 years later, eh?"

Don't know if it's at 3x platinum, but if so, Counting Crows' "Recovering the Satellites" seems to fit the NJ bill. I just looked at the singles, and besides A Long December (a song I actually like), the others I couldn't hum even if you threatened to make me hang out with Adam Duritz for a week.

Wow, that was a lot of activity in a couple days. Was The Cult's Sonic Temple a huge event album?

That's going to be weird because I could see long time fans thinking of it as a new jersey but for alot of us kids it was the first time they'd heard them as is probably their biggest seller

Whether kid or long-time fan I think we can all agree that it's the ultimate in 'you are beyond irony' album covers:

http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/sonictemple.jpg

http://www.minilps.net/images/stories/shop_image/product/SONICTEMPBAC.jpg

Haven't listened to this in about 20 years. "Edie (Ciao Baby)" still holds up.

I'm really trying to puzzle out what the Cult's Slippery When Wet would be if this was their New Jersey btw.