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

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.

Whoa, the Tea Party's "Kashmir" rips actually sound more like "Soul Asylum" (the "Kashmir" rip on Sonic Temple, not the band) than "Kashmir" itself.

Coming straight to this thread from a politics thread, I went "Tea Party".... Kashmir riffs...? and was already constructing a world where this was about some link i didn't see to like, a Conservapedia project to create Tea Party friendly covers of classic rock tunes.

lol

I'm sure it exists.

Unliberal (Kidz) Bop

The Cult's is Electric, surely? Love was the big crossover that drew them to public attention, and that's the big-selling follow-up - although it would be easy to assert (as I have before) that pretty much every record gets worse since the outset and Love is the start of the plummet into mediocrity.

Yeah, I'm just very unconvinced by the idea that Electric is the album that everyone still loves whereas Sonic Temple is the album that everyone bought but can't remember why.

Pretty sure "Love Removal Machine" is the only song I ever hear from Electric. (Mostly just hear "Firewoman" from Sonic Temple, "Edie" once in a blue moon.)

adrenalize was probably the most disappointing album of my youth, it's like the ghostbusters 2 of pop metal.

― omar little, Friday, August 3, 2012 1:19 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Every huge artist has their "Ghostbusters 2" - a huge event followup that immediately feels a lot hollow & signals a river of pink slime

Speakerboxx/love below

while personally i shake my fist at the idea either album is hollow and almost wonder if it's becoming underrated (still prefer it to stankonia on the whole), i'll admit for a dense double album it wound up low on hits and def signaled that "outkast" had peaked.

I was looking through the CDs at the public library today, and nearly every one we mentioned here was there. Almost checked out "Storm Front"

Sb/lb should have totally been on the list! D40 otm....oops

SB/LB is mainly just weird because it was a double album that "felt" like a single album IMO - - - two HUGE hits and one moderate one, that is not bad performance at all in the grand scheme of things. Plus the single would be less intimidating to casual fans; I think it'd be really really highly regarded if it'd been carved down.

The group was maybe also pretty overexposed at that point, having followed Stankonia's success up with the hits compilation and "The Whole World" - they sort of hadn't been off the radio at any point since "Rosa Parks," y'know?