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

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!

the nerve

ilxor chr1s just called it via email to me today:

the 20/20 Experience is Timberlake's New Jersey

we'll be following this story as it develops

Ha, Chris Molanphy is also saying reasonably similar over on FB and Twitter:

https://www.facebook.com/cmolanphy/posts/148890768612236

News from Billboard that the Timberlake album sales estimates just keep drifting higher—they've gone from 500Kish to a monster 800K-plus (bit.ly/WHxBhB)—remind me of a rule I coined in my column a few years back, the "AC/DC Rule" (second page of this 2011 column about Gaga, below).

The rule states that initial sales of an album, particularly a blockbuster, are a referendum on the public's feelings about the act's LAST album, not the new one. I named it after AC/DC, who scored their first No. 1 album not with all-time best disc 'Back in Black,' but with the 1981 *followup* to 'BiB' (the largely forgotten 'For Those About to Rock, We Salute You').

Ha! I emailed sh@kedown cuz I couldn't find this thread...I was thinking about this last night cuz my wife was chomping at the bit to get this record & was all crazy hyped for it. But I asked her how she liked it and she just said it was "good" but in that way where I could just tell she wasn't feeling it.

Another element to the "New Jersey" that we didn't really touch on that I think is important...part of what makes a record a "New Jersey" is that the previous album has to be kind of surprise hit & the "New Jersey" record sells a ton out of the gate becuz people are almost making up for the last record sneaking up on them.

I think the audience makes a record a "New Jersey" as much as the artist does, maybe more.

did we mention Paula Abdul's Spellbound?

lol:

Paula Abdul - Spellbound

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 2:31 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah perfect

― da croupier, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 2:31 PM (7 months ago)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/04/04/176269938/justin-timberlake-and-the-ac-dc-rule

boo on "ac/dc rule"

”joke's on you/you heard a bitin'-ass crew”

Tbf it's not precisely the same idea, and chris has been calling it that for a couple years now

"New Jersey" rule is more subjective.. not solely backed up by data/numbers.