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

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.

the problem with the avengers movie analogy is that it's actually a sales-peak "reunion" album, which I don't think anyone rates over their first, rather than a "supergroup" debut.

relevance is a weird word for a group like Bon Jovi--yeah, they don't make the cover of Spin anymore, but they'd probably fill a stadium faster than a bill of the last 20 rock bands to get a BNM from p4k.

"It's My Life" is also notable for its line referencing Frank Sinatra: "My heart is like an open highway / Like Frankie said / I did it 'My Way'." Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora apparently had a disagreement over those lines, with Bon Jovi recalling:[3]

I had just come home from making U-571 and I said "Sinatra made 16 movies and toured 'til he was 80. This is my role model". He [Sambora] said, "You can't write that damn lyric. Nobody cares about Frank Sinatra but you." And I wrote it anyway.

Sambora really clinging to his cultural relevance there

Bon Jovi had consistently impressive sales in the 2000s.

yeah once they hit that 2x platinum lower plateau they kept it going

I mean, I'm looking at the sales of Crush, Have a Nice Day, and Lost Highway and – wow, what a plateau.

and I always forget what a touchstone they are in England

in the 90s they still had videos on MTV "gimme something for the BLUES!" then came "It's My Life" and then their subtle shift towards country...only real misstep was his Destination Anywhere album in the late '90s but that was really an indulgence slapped onto an audition reel mini-movie co-starring Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg that I remember catching on VH1.

numbers have diminished a bit in the last decade, but not at a rate any more precipitous than the music industry itself.

while definitely a cheesy cross between roots-rock and hard rock, they've served up that cheese consistently without demanding the audience respect them or anything.

Their song "Who Says You Can't Go Home" has been omnipresent on Country radio stations for 6 years, though I doubt many of us have heard it.

Why would you doubt that?

I've heard it: it sounds like Johnny Cougar.

by "us" i mean ilm, which is collectively not all that into country radio

Yeah, I don't go out of my way to listen to country radio but that song was everywhere.

seriously dying at richie sambora worrying that "like frankie said i did it my way" was too esoteric

Continuum, maybe a contender?

I forgot the version of the song in this video was actually slightly different from the studio version of the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahf2B_eZUc4