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

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.

i think this ac/dc theory makes sense. i don't like the implication, though, that the 20/20 experience is worse than futuresex/lovesounds and will, in the long run, prove ephemeral. the 20/20 experience is great.

Yeah, it's a weak peg on which to hang it as a 'current' story. I do like the approach to the numbers, with the specific breakdown of the previous "classic" record's sales peak/timeline. But yeah, it's a different thing, more concerned with canonical/catalog records rather than phenomena at the time. The New Jersey lens opens up the phenomenon of something like Third Stage, whereas the AC/DC thing would seem to suggest that all the Boston fans had been well and properly soured by their experience of Don't Look Back.

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

― billstevejim, Sunday, April 14, 2013 11:06 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya i suppose this is more interesting, nevermind

20/20 is good ya but it will prove ephemeral in contrast to fs/ls

Related to the current Police poll, Synchronicity is a great example of New Jersey potential skillfully dodged.

yet another example of how hate is a marvelous thing

An example of an album that passes the AC/DC rule but not the New Jersey would be Weezer's Pinkerton - which certainly had bigger first-week sales than the Blue Album even with its relative underperformance. However, the Green album charted higher and one couldn't really argue Pinkerton was the beginning of the end at all. There's definitely some correlation, but not all albums that benefit from following a blockbuster necessarily signal the beginning of the end in hindsight.

there are undoubtedly better examples (particularly since Pinkerton's chart peak was below the Blue Album's), however the point is that while it's not hard for an album to fulfill both, it's not guaranteed.

Related to the current Police poll, Synchronicity is a great example of New Jersey potential skillfully dodged.

― cougars and sneezers (Eazy), Sunday, April 14, 2013 3:40 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But Ghost In The Machine didn't exactly set the world on fire, iirc...might that be the Police's New Jersey?

Every Police album outsold and outcharted its predecessor in the States.

in a sense, the ac/dc rule is just "big opening sales doesn't mean the artist hasn't already peaked." New Jersey is the award given to the album that achieved big-ass success before everyone realized you'd already peaked.

an example of an artist whose New Jersey and AC/DC rule albums are different - Celine Dion, who only sold one million less worldwide of Let's Talk About Love than Falling Into You, but was undeniably thinner on hits and coasting off Titanic in hindsight. However, her "AC/DC" rule album would be A New Day Has Come, which had huge #1 opening week sales but only sold a third worldwide of what Let's Talk About Love did.

Saw this revived and expected to see Random Access Memories nominated.

yes, who can forget the fever in the streets when octuple-platinum selling arena-fillers daft punk dropped an album that was later seen to have not been so classic as all that

Every Police album outsold and outcharted its predecessor in the States.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, April 14, 2013 4:18 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah, didn't realize that. For some reason, I thought Ghost didn't sell as well in the long run as Zenyatta. But my memory is likely tainted by my hatred of Ghost.

The Who never had a New Jersey, but definitely had an AC/DC with Quadrophenia. It went gold in one day (or, more accurately, shipped gold in one day), and hit #2, but took 20 years to go platinum. Who's Next peaked at #4 in the US, and sold at least five times as many copies. None of the Quadrophenia singles came close to the top 40 ("Love, Reign O'er Me" topped out at #76).

Not quite sure if 20/20 fits the AC/DC rule, since Timberlake's "Back in Black" is probably "No Strings Attached"

ehhh, I suspect way more teens are going to be downloading FSLS in 20 years than any N'Sync album, but I could be way way off.

I would put money on JT's solo stuff outliving N'Sync's material. Even now, it seems that N'Sync, as well as the Backstreet Boys, only have nostalgia value, like mmm bop or something, while there are songs from Justified, (which is 10 years old!), that still hold up. i just think in general his solo work is much better than n'sync.

nah, I love plenty of BSB songs

I definitely hear the Justified hits, especially "Cry Me A River," on the radio way more than the N*Sync hits but that might just be cyclical.

i feel like they are more r&b/hip-hop oriented whereas n sync is 90s bubblegum, which is like its own thing that just sounds really dated now.

"MMMbop" is all-time imo.

oh yeah, i'm not disagreeing with that. but i think it is still very of-its-time and more eternal pop songs kind of transcend that. i don't dislike dated-sounded 90s bubblegum either: i love me some early britney spears.

actually, now that i wrote that, i'm not sure if i even agree with the "transcending its time" thing. ABBA songs are very 70s but they will be with us forever. hmm.... i still think JT's solo stuff with last longer.

*will last longer (than n sync songs)

I don't understand your argument "Of its time" is not a value judgment, it's a fact. Every song is of its time. There's no platonic ideal.