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

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

Here's one: Nelly - Sweat/Suit

It's less that Bon Jovi had a big career decline and more that Slippery When Wet was so monumentally huge that it couldn't be repeated.

thought of one that nobody had mentioned: As I Am by Alicia Keys was her last triple platinum album, the next one sold half as much, and the only song anyone remembers from it is "No One," which isn't as highly regarded as several hits from her first 2 albums.

ha, "no one" was her first hit that i liked.

i dunno about "regard" but it looks like "No One" outsold all the previous singles by a wide margin, and "half as much" drop-offs seem less meaningful after 2006, when like, the industry's in freefall.

any successful single will have higher sales figures in 2007 than any successful single from 2001-2004. "Fallin'" would've been multi-platinum too if it came out in the iTunes boom years.

also As I Am sold three million in 2007-2008, after album sales started to drop off big time. when The Element of Freedom (lol) sold half as much 2 years later it was because of lack of pop hits/audience enthusiasm, not the sales climate.

Wasn't "Try sleeping with a broken heart" a big hit and isn't it her best song? (it is imo)

There were three top 10 hits off that album in the UK fwiw.

it's hilarious that "Doesn't Mean Anything" and the Jay-Z-less version of "Empire State of Mind" were huge in the UK (while the album's biggest US hit, "Un-Thinkable," didn't even chart there!)

"No One" is probably her biggest hit, technically speaking. And at this point I hear it way more than even "Fallin'," in coffee shops and grocery stores and such. Not unwelcome either, I really like that track. Not sure that invalidates the parent album as a New Jersey, but yeah, the goofy industry at this point probably moves the goalposts. We may have to revisit this thread in a systematic way ten years from now with "Every huge artist post-2003 has a 'Born This Way'..."

The next Drake album is almost certainly going to be a New Jersey

only in the sense that he resembles a Jersey Shore cast member

Every huge Drake has their 'every Drake album' - a huge event album that immediately feels a bit hollow and signals a career monotone

::croons over muffled drums about how hollow it all feels::

Manic Street Preachers - This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours

― Gavin, Leeds, Tuesday, 7 August 2012 18:39 (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually, for MSP I'd suggest Know Your Enemy is that album. It's notable as being the Manics last really hyped "event" album, but also arrived with the nagging feeling they were becoming exhausted as a cultural force - which they went on to prove by following it up with the disappointingly insipid Lifeblood. Due to the gimmick of releasing two lead singles simultaneously, KNE had two number ones in the same week, "So Why So Sad" & "Found That Soul". But who remembers those now? Or "Let Robeson Sing", for that matter?

Lifeblood is so much better than This Is My Truth, Kill Your Enemy and the other two non-Richey lyrics late period albums

Solitude Sometimes Is is the songs they should have released as a single. It's truly great.

Sound Loaded is the sixth album by the Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin, released by Columbia Records on November 14, 2000. The album has been credited with worldwide sales of over eight million copies and went Multi-Platinum in the United States and several other territories. This album is Martin's fourth marketed in the US, and is his second album in English. It includes the hit singles "She Bangs" and "Nobody Wants to Be Lonely".

(of course, it may still be seen as a Big Deal outside the anglophone world; perhaps it's a Slippery in Puerto Rico and a Fairweather Johnson in the States?)

I felt this way about "And Justice For All" at the time it came out.
I still feel that way and I don't care about how The Black Album was huge.

And Justice For All was twice as good as Master of Puppets.

The only thing it doesn't have is something that can compare to "Orion", which itself is three or four times more luminous than anything else in their catalog.

no way is AJFA a New Jersey.

Cliff's death makesit kinda hard to judge

I would have thought Load was Metallica's New Jersey, myself...

The only thing it doesn't have is something that can compare to "Orion" bass.

Cliff's death makesit kinda hard to judge

― U.S. State Department, Office of Rare Psych (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, December 3, 2012 9:56 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha there's nothing to judge -- the whole New Jersey thing is based on sales and mass popularity, and AJFA made them bigger than ever, and they got even bigger with the next album, therefore it's not possible.

yeah if metallica has one it's unquestionably load

I'd have said the Black album was their New Jersey, definitely

Well, you are bonkers. The Black album is a Slippery if I've ever seen one.

for real. The Black Album is their WE MADE IT.

some circumstantial evidence:

"Enter Sandman" #16 hot 100, #10 rock
"Until It Sleeps" #10 hot 100, #1 rock
"The Memory Remains" #28 hot 100, #3 rock

the question of whether ReLoad or Garage Inc or S&M or St Anger is the TRUE "bloom officially off rose" follow-up to Load blurs things, but i can't imagine an argument for any earlier album being a New Jersey that doesn't hinge on the maker's tastes

also here's the from-each-album breakdown of their last tour setlist in august

Metallica (4)
Ride the Lightning (4)
Master of Puppets (3)
Kill 'em All (2)
Reload (2)
…and Justice for All (2)
Death Magnetic (1)

it's actually hilarious that the only load single they've played with any regularity live in the last 10 years is "king nothing," but apparently "the memory remains" is a staple

the last Xtina album Bionic might count as one of these.

bionic is just a straight-up flop. problem with xtina is that every album has sold a fraction of the one before it. i guess the best argument would be for stripped

huh except apparently stripped was way bigger in europe than the debut

I've probably misunderstood the concept of New Jersey

mm me too i think. i'm crap at this game.

It would help if it had nothing to do with Bon jovi

Pssh, it's like y'all aren't willing to put in the effort to attentively study 1,500+ posts across three threads about this incredibly narrow category we've hashed out!