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

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.

Simmons's memoir open about chart manipulation.

(yes, I read the portion of it up until the photo of Ace making out with their manager)

XP to timellison - I'm not even talking about the music - I mean the way it's marketed, talked about, etc. You and I and most people on this board know that there's nothing that says teenpop can't be great art. But we've been conditioned to think otherwise. I don't think most of those records stop getting played on the radio entirely after 2 or 3 years because they're bad, or even because people don't want to hear them anymore, but because there's a vested industry interest in making them obsolete. If "I Want You Back" were simply great as opposed to transcendent we probably wouldn't hear it anymore. Whereas there are a lot of mediocre or worse rock records from that era that still get serious airtime.

kiss's New Jersey: the four solo albums?

kiss was never huge enough to really get a new jersey - only destroyer's even been certified double platinum - but Dynasty, the follow-up to the solos, still went platinum and charted higher than any of the 4.

XP RE Kiss - I'm pretty sure the RIAA changed certification rules because execs like Neil Bogart, head of Casablanca Records (Kiss's label) gamed the system so blatantly. Those four solo albums were only the most notorious example.

xpost to alfred, again, to clarify something: i don't believe in anything like "timelessness." i was just being sloppy in my description of why i thought "cry me a river" provided a deeper, more fulfilling kind of pleasure than bye bye bye, which feels "thinner" and so, because it is 15 or so years old, "obsolete" in a way that great pop songs -- no matter how "of their time" they are, that's not the issue all -- never do.

here's timelessness. It's played all the time in Australia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7fxN3g5sLw

sweet.

kiss was never huge enough to really get a new jersey - only destroyer's even been certified double platinum

piss. alive ii went dbl platinum, while alive, rock n roll over and love gun went single. they were fuckin huge for a while there.

If "I Want You Back" were simply great as opposed to transcendent we probably wouldn't hear it anymore. Whereas there are a lot of mediocre or worse rock records from that era that still get serious airtime.

Not sure about that - I've certainly heard, say, "Band of Gold" or "Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)" on the radio a lot over the years.

piss. alive ii went dbl platinum, while alive, rock n roll over and love gun went single. they were fuckin huge for a while there.

piss yourself. we're talking about blockbusters - and kiss only has like one or two albums that haven't gone gold - so it's not like they had a big album that was hollow in hindsight considering the drop that followed. Big reason we had a 3xplatinum minimum when doing the poll.

i'm just saying they were huge, supposedly the most popular band in america at the time of love gun's release. that thing went platinum almost immediately on release, was the event album of its moment and a huge off the bat success. not saying it was their nj, but the reason they didn't really have one was that they only slowly lost the "hottest band in the world" steam they picked up from destroyer and alive ii, over the course of three proper albums (rock & roll over, love gun and dynasty) and four solo projects.

i know they had earned that "most popular band in america" title in some poll, but they also only had one album ever in the top 5.

haha until psycho circus, that is

though admitted it's a little hard to gauge 70s stuff when most multi-platinum certifications didn't come until the 80s - though for instance, Bob Seger has three albums that have gone 5x platinum or more.