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

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!

A Neil possibility: Mirror Ball

dylan himself said that he made nashville skyline to make ppl not like him anymore, same w/self-portrait

plus nashville skyline has the whole weird voice thing, and I hold that new jerseys can't be stylistic shifts

desire is definitely a new jersey of blood on the tracks, but then again that era spit hot lava all over the motherfuckin' track on the rolling thunder review

i don't think dylan really has one tbh

same w/neil

Self-Portrait is merely his first misstep, which every artist gets and lots of fans forgave him for. The two followups were modest gestures and warm-ups for The Next Statement.

yeah i mean anything under 3x platinum is not really a new jersey, it's just fun to yammer about where the greats got close

re Neil: an artist can have a couple New Jerseys!

i guess a new jersey for a career/cult artist would be the album that signified the end of their glory period (or a glory period), only it was sold and basically accepted as an ongoing part of the glory period initially.

obviously none of these are as fun as a REAL new jersey, which involves hoodwinking more than like a half million nerds

we probably need a different label for a critical or cult version of a New Jersey so we don't keep having these 3x platinum reminders.

xxpost

Under the Bushes, Under the Stars?

yeah i'm trying to think of a blatantly obvious album that was accepted at glorious that the air has dropped out of - I'm thinking Little Creatures but I bet some people will get sandy vadge about that

some people still love that but it was the #1 album in pazz'n'jop and pretty uniformly it's looked at as their weakest album to that point now.

The more culty the act, the harder this gets because you have less and less of a consensus about where they fell off (or if they did so at all).

totally

...although i guess this thread is proof that the 3x platinum smashes are not necessarily reservoirs of consensus...

yeah it's just harder to contradict "that's not how it felt under my rock" belly-achers with STATS

True Storires is a better candidate if we drop the 3x platinum.

it does have the "it had a movie!" card and their least critically respected top 40 hit, even the critics had already lept back a bit.

How can any artist with multiple generations of fans making their albums hits count as having a New Jersey? Isn't one of the reasons New Jersey is the benchmark for this kind of thing because it represented a perceived fleeting high water mark of cultural relevance that would never be approached again? Or at least the album that signified that the artist was a one era touchstone? Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young,... all these guys had culturally relevant big sellers long after their initial splash. Isn't half the point that Bon Jovi never again had cultural relevance after New Jersey. Now I'm young-ish, but my impression of all these classic rock dudes is that they fell off for a bit and had a big splash album later, so... that kind of disqualifies them from having a New Jersey at all.

Also, is the fact that Bon Jovi lost all cultural relevance post New Jersey (or is post Nevermind?) central to a New Jersey? Because Talking Heads never really lost that cultural relevance in the same way. Unless there are a bunch of kids out there listening to top 40 hair metal from the 80s and I'm not aware of it...

I like this idea of Pinkertons though... but other than maybe VU & Nico I can't think of anything that would match that trajectory.

Because Talking Heads never really lost that cultural relevance in the same way.

Not in the same way but they sure did. The nineties were hard for a Heads fan. Chris Frantz was moaning in '99 that the band sold few records in catalog and the band left no heirs.

Things changed in 2002, of course.

Yeah but... 2002 DID happen. Bon Jovi never got a similar chance and I don't see it happening. Also, growing up in the 90s I KNEW Bon Jovi wasn't cool, but somehow Talking Heads seemed cool. And I never owned a Talking Heads album back then, but my first CD was Slippery When Wet (my friend had New Jersey on cassette).

yeah i'm trying to think of a blatantly obvious album that was accepted at glorious that the air has dropped out of - I'm thinking Little Creatures but I bet some people will get sandy vadge about that

― da croupier, Monday, August 13, 2012 7:40 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark

sand in the vadge: popular favorites

Kate Bush The Dreaming? i mean it was her biggest charting album up to that point.

it didn't sell well, it's an excellent record, and the followup was huge

a huge event album that felt hollow?

Talking Heads had a very brief 5 year window of not being cool in the '90s that affirmed their timeless hipness that coincided with Bill Murray experiencing same

sensual world would be my kate pick

lol you guys are reaching

The Dreaming, Hounds of Love, and The Sensual World each has substantial cachet.

In a sense Bush was pretty smart to wait a long ass time to make an album after Red Shoes (Her highest charting album in the US)

a well timed hiatus is basically the best career move in music, as far as engendering goodwill

i was thinking maybe DMX had a New Jersey, but the last of his three triple platinum albums, And Then There Was X, was also the biggest and had some of his most enduring hits. pretty big drop from that two The Great Depression's single platinum, though.

two=to

skimming through the history of #1 albums in the US and here are some potentials we arguably missed.

Styx - Paradise Theater. 3x platinum. Only #1 album, had two top ten hits and neither are "come sail away" or "babe". next, Kilroy Was here (mentioned earlier in the thread), had hits but only went platinum. someone in their 40s can enlighten because i was told these guys were worse than wings and never had reason to believe otherwise.

Cypress Hill - Black Sunday. 3x platinum, with debut only going 2x platinum. Yes "insane in the brain" but imo barely a patch on the debut and def sign

Wu-Tang Clan - Wu Tang Forever - granted, a 2cd going 4x platinum means they actually shipped around half that, but still.

Korn - Issues. Last multiplatinum, and had two top ten alternative radio hits where Follow had only one. I sure don't recall "Falling Away From Me" and "Make Me Bad" as fondly as I do "Freak On A Leash" and "Got The Life" but maybe someone 4 years younger than me can school this.

Two factoids about not-quite-new-jersiers I discovered during this sift.
1) Did you know BOTH big All-4-One songs were covers of songs originally done by John Michael Montgomery?
2) Kenny G's first christmas album from 1994 (8x platinum) is named Miracles: The Holiday Album. His second, from 1999 (3x platinum) is named Faith: A Holiday Album.

Wow, Issues, I think I always thought "Falling Away From Me" was from the same album as "Freak On A Leash" - it was just all part of the lotta-Korn-on-the-radio wave. That seems New Jersey-ish.

Wu-Tang Forever probably counts although its fans love it, a lot. But event-wise, it was more the centerpiece of the suddenly gigantic Wu empire than the album itself, y'know? It's the Avengers movie, not Iron Man 3 or Thor 2 or whatever.

hahahaha re: Kenny G

one thing i will give Korn is that they haven't let commercial decline slow them down one bit. that dubstep album last year was their sixth studio album since Issues, no major label rock band churns 'em out like them.

someone in their 40s can enlighten because i was told these guys were worse than wings and never had reason to believe otherwise.

Understatement.

Wu-Tang Forever probably counts although its fans love it, a lot. But event-wise, it was more the centerpiece of the suddenly gigantic Wu empire than the album itself, y'know? It's the Avengers movie, not Iron Man 3 or Thor 2 or whatever.

wu is hard though because i consider all of the work that took place from the release of 36 chambe & all the solos albums to be "wu tang" stuff in general, i think that initial era is all wu tang no matter who's name is on the cover

that said, wu tang forever definitely signalled the end of that era so that bolsters its new jersey credentials

fwiw, I waited in line at midnight outside of a record store to get Wu Tang Forever, if that helps in the "event album" sense

Also, is the fact that Bon Jovi lost all cultural relevance post New Jersey (or is post Nevermind?) central to a New Jersey? Because Talking Heads never really lost that cultural relevance in the same way. Unless there are a bunch of kids out there listening to top 40 hair metal from the 80s and I'm not aware of it...

See my post upthread about Bon Jovi's sales, radio play, and tours post-NJ. They are far from having lost all cultural relevance. (They got plenty of new country airplay around the time of their last album.) JBJ even appeared on 30 Rock. "Livin' on a Prayer" was probably one of the most popular songs on the course listening when I taught rock music in Buffalo btw. Karaoke staple at student pub nights etc.