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

Guns 'N' Roses for me. Disappeared up the ass of their ambition and yet still created something that has moments of magic.

personally likely to vote for Monster - I love it and yet the "buyer's remorse" is notorious. Also love Afterburner, The Massacre, Chocolate Starfish and Dangerous.

The actual answer, THIRD STAGE, is now gone, so I guess Use Your Illusion or Fore! Will contemplate.

Key posts from the other thread IMO:

I feel like some people aren't getting that a New Jersey isn't a flop, and isn't an album that still makes Best of the Decade lists

― da croupier, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 1:32 PM Bookmark

New Jersey was the first album I ever got (that wasn't e.g. something taped off my Mum's friend's kid or something). IIRC, the local album rock station played the whole thing when it came out. Even then, I think I kind of felt that it was an event yet not quite the same as "You Give Love a Bad Name" and "Livin' on a Prayer".

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:39 PM Bookmark

For my money, a New Jersey has little to do with subsequent quality drop-off - that is, I don't think it needs the "beginning of the end" clause in the definition...because then we're really just talking about "big albums that weren't as good as the previous one and were better than the ones that followed." What's interesting to me about the NJ phenomenon is the idea of an album that sells huge, spawns SEVERAL hits, and yet kind of disappears from the band's narrative, legacy, canonic list of concert staples, whatever. (...) It's a monster hit album that just had no long-term constituency, no traction in people's hearts, and no hope of making the "best of decade" countdown circuit. (...)

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 5:38 PM Bookmark

the New Jersey: a huge event album that's massive by all reasonable standards but is shadowed by the album(s) that ironically are the only reason it was massive, since it was pretty damn shallow on its own merits (i.e. New Jersey, Spellbound, For Those About To Rock, Spirits Having Flown, Afterburner, Fore!, Be Here Now in the UK)

the Fairweather Johnson: a huge event album that still sells better than it should've thanks to the band's previous success, but one could almost immediately sense fortunes going considerably southward even if one was a fan (i.e. Fairweather Johnson, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, Nine Lives, Be Here Now in the US)

― da croupier, Wednesday, August 8, 2012 7:25 PM Bookmark

Worst Summer job ever was working at the Tilly Balloon Co. (the Monster artwork is one of their balloons).
Spending all day "testing" balloons. Put balloon over spigot... send air into balloon... balloon pops in your face 3x outta 10 (no, you DON'T get used to this).

Was still more fun than listening to "Monster" though.

― mr.raffles, Thursday, August 9, 2012 9:38 AM Bookmark

while I apologize for my moment of weakness re: third stage, I do like that every one of these albums are like a lame duck presidential term, with U2 as Grover Cleveland

The alarming thing is that there is someone's dad, somewhere, whose record collection includes everything on this list, and no other CDs.

After all that, Gaga's not even one of the choices?

didn't go 3x platinum, we don't know if it's a clear decline yet

Celine Dion and Backstreet Boys seem like the best choices for "most."

g'n'r def had the most epic "go away, go away, oh won't you please go away, why aren't you going away" of the bunch

unless we count the entire careers of wings and van hagar

Not here, not now...but sooner or later, croup, we're going to have it out over Wings.

just realized one arguable absence - a supergroup album that did better than the last albums by their old bands while ironically cementing their future negligibility. An album named Audioslave.

Best: Dangerous
Most: Yeah, def Backstreet Boys

xpost though the fact that both groups, esp soundgarden, had already suffered a drop makes it less than a crucial inclusion

The alarming thing is that there is someone's dad, somewhere, whose record collection includes everything on this list, and no other CDs.

― Doctor Casino, Friday, August 10, 2012 10:42 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol yes, virtually all of the ones released from 91 to 94 were owned by someone in my household -- Use Your Illusion, River Of Dreams, Too Legit To Quit, Monster, Adrenalize, Dangerous, We Can't Dance, alla dat

Will probably go with Dangerous, but I won't count out Monster or The Massacre or ....But Seriously

i'm torn between Use Your Illusion and Chocolate Starfish for terribly entertaining hard rock indulgence

ben stiller, you are my favorite muthafucka...i told you, didn't i?

alice cooper you are my favorite muthafucka!

"That means you andy secher at hit parader, circus magazine!"

YOU WANNA ANTAGONIZE ME? ANTAGONIZE ME, MOTHERFUCKER!

seriously, i make "Get In The Ring" references in conversation every few months and nobody ever has the slightest idea what it is i'm doing an impression of

Is anyone actually going to vote for New Jersey?

of course not. which is really what makes it the ultimate archetype of the form.

seriously, i make "Get In The Ring" references in conversation every few months and nobody ever has the slightest idea what it is i'm doing an impression of

― Doctor Casino, Friday, August 10, 2012 11:17 AM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark

you should be grateful to the friends that stuck with you through all the fuckin' shit

in 2000 a diamond album had a three-way bj fantasy involving the ICP, and a 5x platinum album had a song about how mad Fred durst was when he saw his face on a plate in the "Starfuckers Inc" video.

TS: durst vs axl, which guy was a bigger dick and made you happier when their new jersey sent them unknowingly off into the fields of pathetic irrelevance

I mean on personality alone, few things signal "fuck this band" like "Get In The Ring," which aside from making the band look like complete clowns, is also just a boring filler rock track raising the question of why they needed a damned double album.

tbf axl sent himself off to more of a degree

Axl is a genuine bastard, at this point Fred just seems like an extroverted Smiths fan

also Doc there was quite a love-in about "Get In The Ring" as a song on a GNR thread recently, that riff slays imo

in 2003 Fred Durst made videos where he made out with Thora Birch and Halle Berry and America was smart enough to only let it go platinum, while if Axl had brought out some riffs and/or dolphins in the mid-'90s who knows if we would have been strong

tbf Axl DID go platinum with an album of New York Dolls and Charles Manson covers

lol i never realized this but The Spaghetti Incident outsold Chinese Democracy!

The Spaghetti Incident is the only GNR album I own, and it's great.

also Doc there was quite a love-in about "Get In The Ring" as a song on a GNR thread recently, that riff slays imo

― Pollopolicía (some dude), Friday, August 10, 2012 11:26 AM Bookmark

O_o seriously? Seems like the most by-the-numbers workout to me, but I guess I'm not a GNR fan as such.

Is anyone actually going to vote for New Jersey?
― Matt DC, Friday, August 10, 2012 10:18 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

of course not. which is really what makes it the ultimate archetype of the form.
― Pollopolicía (some dude), Friday, August 10, 2012 10:18 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sooo OTM.

Best album: UYI or Dangerous. Both records are fascinating in part because they're grotesque - periodic fits of grandstanding, incessant superstar whining about victimization at the hands of the media, portentous intros, fades and overdub-city overproduction. All of which signal egos spinning out of control and production budgets pumped beyond all reason by their industry enablers more audibly than almost any music before or since. And even with all that cash the results are still more workmanlike than their breakthrough predecessors. Yet both albums showcase plenty of Good Art that requires no introduction, previous fanship or goodwill on the part of the listener to be appreciated. All of which is maybe why these records are also two of the most Jersey-esque even if they're almost too good for the category. I voted UYI on the grounds that I still listen to it all the time, though if we're talking "best" Dangerous would probably be the more aesthetically defensible answer. There's too much audible strain on Dangerous for me to really enjoy it as much as I'd like to.

I get what you're saying about Dangerous, but OTOH uh-huh, told you, it ain't to much for me to JAM *breaks glass*

One thing that's funny about Monster is how it sounds very New Jersey, campy hard rock bubblegum with ridiculous conceits like "tongue." But REM's Slippery When Wets had mandolins and stream-of-conscious meditations on death and love. Somehow they managed to make a very normal fade-out after a very bizarre success. They thought "let's remind them we're a rock band"...forgetting that rock bands often have a new jersey by the third big hit album.

djp otm

all I really remember about Monster is that at the time I really loved "Bang and Blame"

worst song by far!

look it has prominent tom work in it, I know my biases and how helpless to them I am

it's always been pretty low in my estimation, too. In the documentary about the Monster tour, the band was really excited about playing it on SNL, though.

haha ok. "i don't sleep i dream" is the better tom tom slow burner though imo.

xpost isn't "dream" the one they played on SNL?

Best: Butterfly. I guess it was the start of her commercial decline, but the consensus (at least amongst fans) is that it's her artistic peak, so I don't really see it as a New Jersey.
Most: BSB

xpost they played those two AND kenneth, a rare gesture from the show at the time. Hosted by Sarah Jessica Parker during the godawful period right before will ferrell's era.

gonna vote use your illusion, because my friend dan had his license early and we drove an hour to mankato to buy it at midnight at musicland

Wrong on both counts, though I'm sure The Blueprint 2 is flattered.

first, I don't see where in the original description it says it has to be the IMMEDIATE consecutive follow up to a huge album. Second, I think it definitely works for Metallica if not for Jay-Z.

I apologize for the first post leaving open the possibility a New Jersey could just be a big album you don't like from an artist you never liked again but if you read more of this old thread and the old thread before it you'll see you are wrong

I think the Black album is too complicated - a sign of things to come for fans of 80s Metallica but millions of younger fans got into the band because of that album. Much more than if you compare NJ being an introduction to Jovi.

The Black Album is way too much of its own thing, tbh its not a million miles away from REM circa Out of Time and how that compares to the impact of Green. Huge difference. Whereas NJ following on from Slippery is so much more of 'as you were'

Load is probably Metallica's NJ: huge sales upon release (like 3 mil in two months iirc), singles were big on rock radio but disappeared within 3 years.

If Metallica had put out a studio album circa Live Shit, that could have been a New Jersey.

Load/ReLoad probably qualify. I would be sympathetic to those albums if only for the fact they weren't exactly hot on the heels of the Black Album, unlike the real New Jersey album. By then we're getting into the late 90s as opposed to the early 90s and the climates a little different, even for bands like Metallica.

Christ, never realised how fuckin long Load is.

Right, put in in there.

if they had an album that qualified it would be Reload - 4x platinum (only one disc less than load!), remembered if at all for a marianne faithfull hook, "ARE YOU UNFORGIVEN 2???" and GIMME FUEL GIMME FIYAH GIMME THAT WHICH I DESIRE. Followed by St Anger. But it's hard to give the title to an album that already announces itself as Not Quite A True Follow-Up. I chafed at including Rattle & Hum for the same reason, but there was popular demand.

while one could note the drop from black album to load is far steeper than the drop from reload to st anger, the black album simply can't be a New Jersey because it still sells like hotcakes and still makes Best Albums Ever lists. Whatever personal distaste people feel, any album that is canonical cannot be a New Jersey - New Jersey's are always albums that SEEM like they should be canonized based on commercial success, but aren't.

which is why Rattle and Hum fits

except the albums before and after rattle sold way better (rattle also was a double LP, meaning they should even fewer copies than the 5xplatinum suggests). But we went through all this over a year ago - I included it and my personal pick as a New Jersey, Grammy Album Of The Year winner How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.

shipped even fewer, i mean

rattle & hum seems like the odd man out here because "the gig is up" meant something very different for u2 than it did for bon jovi and pretty much all the other examples here. they reinvented the gig with the followup to the followup. if you follow up your new jersey with your revolver, that pretty much means your new jersey wasn't really your new jersey, doesn't it?

exactly. where How To Dismantle genuinely was a hollow follow-up to All That You Can't Leave Behind, selling almost as much, and winning a ton of grammys off of far weaker songs (UNO DOS TRES QUATORZE!). And the follow-up to THAT was No Line On The Horizon. But some people have a hard time distinguishing New Jerseys from big albums they don't like and general grand follies imo.

hell for a live-outtake-double-grabbag to have songs as enduring as "angel of harlem" "desire" and "all i want is you" is actually impressive

but you never hear those songs anymore! for a 5x platinum album does anyone think "I gotta hear Desire today!"?

the whole pr explosion was absurd, and that they pulled off a comeback like achtung baby was indeed impressive. but they did. Achtung Baby is not Keep The Faith, History Volume 1, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Recycler, Flick Of The Switch, etc

and U2 never hit Joshua Tree sales again. it's true the decline has one bump but otherwise the sales gig never was the same, and R&H was the typical NJ retread

I mean I'd be happy with a separate rock folly category for stuff like R&H but I don't know what else fits

i don't think live/outtake/grabbags that are followed by the second biggest album of the band's career qualify as a new jersey and you're going to have to accept that, just as i accepted 5 people would want to vote for it on the poll. and if you don't know what else fits you should read my umpteen posts about atomic bomb

Achtung Baby shipped 8 million last I checked; it may have matched TJT by now.

no I mean for follies like R&H

in a sense it's "folly" status is overstated - a precipice they were lucky enough to back away from. it's a little embarrassing, but not as much as it looked like it would be.

it's a little embarrassing, but not as much as it looked like it would be.

true, which makes it the opposite of a new jersey, really. new jerseys seem legit at first, at least for a moment, but are eventually revealed as embarrassments. rattle and hum seemed embarrassing right away -- you could almost argue that was intentional -- and, as croup says, seems a little bit less so now.

not reissuing it in the 20th anniversary series suggests the band still feels the embarrassment

I remember at the time most people I knew dug R&H but they didn't think of it as a real album.

I think this type of album is generally one riding the excitement wave from the previous one, oftentimes with a bit of a slight delay between the two albums adding to the excitement, usually with a massive and pretty catchy first single that also in retrospect might seem a bit generic. so I mean the black albums mentioned are nowhere near, because they were both huge on their own merits. metallica's in particular was the one that made them briefly the biggest band on the planet. it's not like most people who bought it were into it bc they were excited after 'and justice for all'.

if they had an album that qualified it would be Reload - 4x platinum (only one disc less than load!), remembered if at all for a marianne faithfull hook, "ARE YOU UNFORGIVEN 2???" and GIMME FUEL GIMME FIYAH GIMME THAT WHICH I DESIRE. Followed by St Anger. But it's hard to give the title to an album that already announces itself as Not Quite A True Follow-Up. I chafed at including Rattle & Hum for the same reason, but there was popular demand.

― da croupier, Friday, 27 December 2013 15:19 (4 hours ago) Permalink

If this is how you're thinking about things, you have a strange idea of how most people perceive New Jersey imo. Bad Medicine and I'll Be There For You are still big memorable singable hit songs that make people nostalgic, even if they're not Living On A Prayer or whatever. Nothing on Reload is like that. I think this might be the center of our misunderstanding.

Also Born to Be My Baby

I was a late arrival to REM and listened over and over to Monster, trying to pick up on what was so great about it ... I never got it. It's the most un-rocking rock album ever.

Hurting, part of this might also be to do with 'legacy' - if you weren't there at the time, have you really had much opportunity to *hear* I'll Be There For You, let alone grow fond of it? I know I haven't. New Jerseys are sales monsters that turn out to contribute nothing essential to a band's package or its text, no reason why you should ever even need to know they exist. I remain convinced that the timelines of promotion are essential here - long campaigns, long enough for the market to transform even as the album keeps selling, so that at the end, there's no stations left looking to play the songs. But I've made this case before.

(In this light, in a weird way, Matchbox 20's Yourself or Something Like You is simultaneously Slippery and Jersey: debut juggernaut, most of whose big hit songs are now radio-homeless, and which has no hope of entering the canon through magazine lists or any other thing. I wonder how much of Rob Thomas's income depends on Santana and ''Meet the Robinsons.'')

Hurting the center of our misunderstanding is there are two threads on the subject more than a year old you haven't read.

Too soon to say what late 90s early 00s bands will enjoy a nostalgia boom. Not like hall and Oates and journey reappreciations were always a given.

Xpost for a rock album Monster is ridiculously, presumably somewhat intentionally, stiff.

Its so fucked up, but I am a fan nonetheless.

Hurting, part of this might also be to do with 'legacy' - if you weren't there at the time, have you really had much opportunity to *hear* I'll Be There For You, let alone grow fond of it? I know I haven't. New Jerseys are sales monsters that turn out to contribute nothing essential to a band's package or its text, no reason why you should ever even need to know they exist

I guess because I was there at the time, it's hard for me to conceive of New Jersey as this empty, big at the time but ultimatley forgotten follow-up record, at least not to a degree that contrasts so greatly with some kind of lasting "legacy" left by Slippery When Wet. In fact I'd say the difference in quality between the hits on Slippery and New Jersey is not all that huge. I feel like true Bon Jovi fans, the ones that make it so Bon Jovi DOES still sell out huge venues, probably dig the New Jersey hits very very much, and don't think of them as relics from some lesser follow-up record. And otherwise I think we're largely talking about people who like doing Living on a Prayer at karaoke. I read the other thread. I increasingly think the premise is kind of silly, and has a lot to do with your individually skewed idea of a band based on your temporal relationship to them.

this whole phenomenon being named after New Jersey cracks me up because an old friend of mine used to, invariably, at any mention of Bon Jovi say something New Jersey and how that was such a big classic album and i'd always be like "really? it seems like the really big songs were on Slippery When Wet," without me ever having looked at the sales figures or chart positions to really authoritatively know that. similarly, my dad used to say Tusk was the Fleetwood Mac album that was the giant blockbuster that ruled the charts for ages, which really confused me for a good long while.

the mere suggestion of Metallica's Black Album is ridiculous -- it's the highest selling album of the SoundScan era, nothing else since 1991 has moved as many units. it's practically Thriller.

It does have several enduring songs, which I guess disqualifies it, but at the same time it felt/feels like the record that signaled their descent into becoming pointless short-haired alt rockers. I guess Load is the better choice for them. I don't think the premise is silly, but I actually think some of these are much better New Jerseys than New Jersey is.

none of these are exact. for instance, there was an instant (early internet) negative reaction to Load from Metallica fans that NJ did not endure from Bon Jovi fans.

The Black Album was more of an It Was Written where an artist tweaks their style and achieves huge success while simultaneously alienating some of their old fans.

On that other thread we went from the initial "EVERY multi-platinum artist has their own New Jersey" to this nit-picky narrow definition.

I've listened to most of'em and ranked'em. What can ya do. I had time to kill.

dammmmmmmn

ranking feels pretty plausible to me, tho i fear i lack the stick-to-it-iveness to actually repeat the experiment. bravo.

Noice. Glad to see that I'm not the only one using his period of self-isolation to trudge through musical mud (currently working my way through an array of previously-unheard pop albums from 1990).

True Colors is maybe the most truly disappointing of that lot. Such a sadly-massive decline.

oooh which 1990 pop albums?

I should check out the Bone Thugs-N-Harmony album.

I bumped yr thread from a few weeks back to address that very question!