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

Van Jaygar, IMO

what about jay-z's? blueprint 2, black album and kingdom come all feel like they count for a variety of reasons

― max, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:22 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No Code was too big a dropoff in sales (and Vitalogy doesn't count because its hits had staying power), so i don't think Pearl Jam has one.

if Jay-Z has one it's Kingdom Come or American Gangster, but post-retirement thing makes that fit weird

― some dude, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:25 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everything that came after the blueprint is one epic new jersey

― protected by viper. stand back. (D-40), Sunday, August 12, 2012 9:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

does anyone else notice this thing where they have friends who are jay-z friends that aren't huge hip hop fans for whom the blueprint is basically the FIRST jay-z album that "counts" -- and was usually purchased after they got into jay via the black album?

as someone who considers The Black Album the end, it's always pretty depressing to encounter people who consider it the beginning. tbh i'm ok with Jay being a non-head's token fav rapper more than almost any other rapper, i just wish they knew more of his first 5 albums.

Black Album doesn't really count because at the time it was ostensibly a swansong (lol). Blueprint 2 works though.

Not sure the commercial decline ever really happened there though.

yeah Jay is too much in the "every album is an event" category to really be a factor in a serious New Jersey discussion

you can build "new jersey" narratives for vol. 3, blueprint and the black album, but honestly the guy's done fine for his era and yeah the "every album is an event" thing stands too.

"Every album is an event" may also, in this case mean "still really successful and just wait til the REAL New Jersey comes out"

no, Jay is in the Stones/Springsteen zone, every album will be an event until he stops making them, and if it was possible for him to make an album so bad/unappealing that people stopped paying attention there are a couple that would've done the trick by now.

i think kingdom come pointed down a "who cares" road but he righted himself with a gangster narrative (for the critics) and arena rap (for the Black Album fans)

And a baby (for the ladies)

and an event album (for Kanye fans who care more about eventfulness than anything else)

Bad example, but Texas' The Hush seems to spring to mind immediately. Also, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.

There MUST be a Rolling Stones New Jersey.

I remain convinced Tattoo You qualifies in the outlines, even if it did not mean people stopped buying subsequent Rolling Stones records.

it doesn't fit the criteria, but man does Steel Wheels feel like one.

Also, from a UK perspective:

Blur - The Great Escape.

It's very easy to forget this (and maybe some Blur fans who were around at the time have attempted to wipe this completely from their memories) but in 1994-1995 on the back of the Parklife album, Blur were legitimate 100% bona fide pop stars. It's a fucking really weird situation when I look back upon it now. On one hand, they weren't really short of critical acclaim at this juncture, but on the other, they had the tabloids routinely hassling them and pre-pubescent girls littering the front rows of their gigs, like they were fucking Boyzone or something. The Great Escape was a very eagerly awaited event album which got great reviews upon release and yielded several hits, but by 1996 perception had changed quite a fair amount and it looked like the game was up.

Of course, the game wasn't up: they released the Blur album which yielded the international hit 'Song 2'. But while 'Beetlebum' was a UK #1 and Blur seemed to be as popular as ever, and while the band were still not short of critical acclaim, they were no longer pop stars on the same level as they were in 1994-1995. As much as I like The Great Escape, moving away from that sound was definitely the best move they could have possibly made. They (especially Graham Coxon) didn't seem comfortable with the whole thing at all.

Goat's Head Soup is the Stones' artistic New Jersey

Ditto, although--I already messed up the thread's premise once--I don't think "ultimately feels a bit hollow" and "signals a career decline" adequately conveys the gap between Exile and Goat's Head Soup. (Says a guy who lost his copy of Goat's Head Soup 35+ years ago...)

it doesn't fit the criteria, but man does Steel Wheels feel like one.

― EZ Snappin, Monday, August 13, 2012 7:49 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

for many of us "Mixed Emotions" was what "She's So Cold" and "Start Me Up" and the other Mall Rat Years hits were to the rest of you.

yeah i know, i'm the same age as you i think

My vote for the Stones' New Jersey is Goats Heads Soup, big selling album that is almost universally considered a major drop in quality from the past, but I get Tattoo You (patchwork awesome album that signaled the inability to get everyone in the same room) and Steel Wheels ("comeback" album that signaled the ability to get together indifferently every couple years for profit) as well.

yeah that's my prob w/steel wheels is that no human being on earth thought that they were coming off their "peak" when they released that album

though i guess at the time exile probably wasn't considered a peak either....exile on mainstreet is a pinkerton i guess

pinkertons could be a whole nother thread

no human being on earth thought that they were coming off their "peak" when they released that album

Dirty Work does have its fans

Tattoo You was also a giant seller with several top 20 hits, of which only "Start Me Up" (Hot 100 #2) gets moderate play now, and that only with the shot in the arm that it got from the big Windows 95 campaign, IMO. Despite its big success, I've never seen the album itself get ranked very highly or talked up as a must-own album.

Also, as Wiki puts it: "A very popular album upon release, it is the last Rolling Stones album to reach the top position of the US charts, concluding a string of #1's dating back to 1971's Sticky Fingers." The following albums (Undercover and Dirty Work) sold way, way less and have no staple songs. Not sure I buy the "every Stones album is an event" line with those two.

Dirty Work does have its fans

AYO

Tattoo You gets plenty of love but mostly as a solid Stones album than a crucial one

I also can't help but think of Coldplay's X&Y, which was a big event album in the UK on the back of A Rush Of Blood To The Head. I know it didn't kill their career, but it did yield six singles: 'Speed Of Sound' (UK #2), 'Fix You' (UK #4), 'Talk' (UK #10), with 'The Hardest Part', 'What If' and 'White Shadows' being radio-only in various territories. Only 'Fix You' has left any kind of lasting impression.

Viva La Vida gave Coldplay back some degree of critical acclaim and gave some memorable hit singles ('Viva La Vida', 'Violet Hill'), but it seems they might have made their second X&Y with Mylo Xyloto...

DUDE..."Waiting on a Friend" gets massive airplay -- maybe their most popular second single.

xp to the Doctor

I don't know, Alfred. Been a long time since I've heard that one.

Re: tattoo you being ranked highly, In 1989, it was ranked #34 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s. In 2003, the album was ranked number 211 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

granted that's from the magazine where Goddess In The Doorway got five stars, but it suggests legs.

TY frequently gets 4 or 4.5 stars in most assessments of their work. I'm not defending the album, only noting that the album was huge and remains quite popular enough with their fans to remain the Scary Monsters benchmark.

xpost It's from a magazine named after the band being ranked! What else were they going to pad out their 1980s list with?

She's The Boss

haha, okay, i wd concede that Tattoo You may be their Scary Monsters rather than their New Jersey, their Fairweather Johnson, their Blood on the Tracks, or their White Album. I also like the idea that every huge artist ultimately gets to contribute one album as a fundamental rock record type.

As I suggested in the poll thread, the Rolling Stones have three obvious (and all defensible) stepping-off points: Exile, Some Girls, and Tattoo You. Which one you choose is going to be generational with some people, with others a matter of interpretation.

If you want to argue for later than Tattoo You, good luck, you're on your own.

I wrote here or elsewhere a few years ago that without knowing a thing about the degree to which Mick and the band hated each other (or what this period augured) I'd be forgiven for thinking that being a teen and hearing "She's So Cold," "Miss You," "Shattered," "Hang Fire," and "Start Me Up" on the radio and anchored to good to great albums was anything but a fabulous time to be a Stones fan.

Sorta inevitable with bands that have multi-decade careers and have acquired whole new fanbases at different times - it stands to reason they'd also shed those fanbases at different times. This brings us back around to the Wings issue maybe, since the mysterious body of people who sold out Wings arena shows through the 70s and festooned their dorm rooms with Speed of Sound posters does not necessarily line up 1:1 with the girls screaming when the Beatles landed, or the teenagers practicing their Romeo lines from "The Girl Is Mine." (Past a certain point, these groups all converge as they become Dad and buy the coffeeshop albums.)

Does Dylan have one of these? Nashville Skyline presaging Self Portrait? Street Legal?

DESIRE

yep!

quite a few defenders here (not me)

If that's the one after Blood on the Tracks, yes. Neil's, I think, is either Rust, Reactor, or Ragged Glory, depending upon how you look at it. (I'm too close to that one to make the right call--for me, probably Reactor.)

i can see the logic for Nashville, even though I like it. John Wesley being the meaty "ok i'm a rootsy chanteur now" album, Nashville being more campy and broad, Self-Portrait being his first "yeesh" moment.

And yeah, Desire is still ranked highly on that RS top 500 mamajama, another option is Modern Times, which apparently went platinum while Love & Theft only went gold!