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

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.

I don't know if you've ever read any conversations on here re. the subject, but it's certainly been discussed to a certain extent. Criticizing something on the basis of it being "dated" is something I don't understand.

xp

xxxxxxxpost I'm speaking purely in these purely data driven Chris Monsanto terms. People were aware of JT because of the N Sync albums, and they sold a shit ton.

to alfred & timellison: i agree with you guys actually, for the most part, that's why i backpedaled. i think certain sounds/styles are more resilient than others though. the production on "infidels" for instance, sounds like an unfortunate fad today, while none of dylan's 60s albums sound like that. i think n'sync's songs are appealing from a nostalgia perspective more than a musical perspective -- JT's best solo material is stronger, imo. this might be a factor of my age though. i'm 23 and a lot of people i know play backstreet boys and n'sync the same way they do disney music: as a reminder of childhood.

I dunno. Dylan's sixties albums...sound like sixties albums. I don't know why you hold up "sound" as a virtue or blemsih.

I don't know if I would go that far, Alfred. I mean, there are certain guitar sounds that I'm not crazy about, etc.

I'm guess I'm open someone doing something cool with them, though.

The relative success of N'Sync is kind of irrelevant to the question of whether 20/20 will eventually be evidence of the AC/DC rule - the point is just that 20/20's massive first week sales say more about the popularity of the last album than the new album's quality. One could arguably have more than one example of an "AC/DC rule" album in their career if they last long enough to have comebacks.

Taste - including record production styles - really is cyclical; a lot of records that sounded "dated" in the 90s don't now. A lot of old sounds eventually come back into vogue. On the other hand, bubblegum is designed to have a limited shelf-life regardless of its quality; if "Justified" sells 20 times more copies than "No Strings Attached" a decade down the line - and this is still gonna be the case in another 10 years if records still sell at all, trust me - that's as much because Timberlake has assumed the mantle of Real Adult Artist as it is due to anything in the music itself.

N'Sync's Celebrity - which sold half of what No Strings Attached did - almost qualifies as an "AC/DC rule" album, as it was the 2nd biggest first week seller in history at the time...except No Strings Attached was the only one that ever sold more.

imo the big distinction that hasn't really been noted is that the 'New Jersey' concept is kind of about the overall career arc and there being some permanent downward turn from that point onward -- the 'AC/DC rule' is just about whether one particular album is selling well on the strength of its predecessor, nothing to say there's a permanent dropoff or whether there's a rebound later etc.

bubblegum is designed to have a limited shelf-life regardless of its quality

Totally disagree. And it's striking to me how a record like "I Want You Back" still sounds like one of the freshest records from 1969.

imo the big distinction that hasn't really been noted is that the 'New Jersey' concept is kind of about the overall career arc and there being some permanent downward turn from that point onward -- the 'AC/DC rule' is just about whether one particular album is selling well on the strength of its predecessor, nothing to say there's a permanent dropoff or whether there's a rebound later etc.

this is the big reason I rankled at including Rattle & Hum in the New Jersey poll, as How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, following ATYCLB and followed by No Line On The Horizon, is a more obvious NJ than the album that came between Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby.

though really U2 are such fucking cockroaches that they may rise again

kiss's New Jersey: the four solo albums?

¡Catorce! will be the biggest album released next year (xp)

KISS' sales are maddeningly consistent and for the pre-Soundscan albums wildly inflated too.