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
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 14 April 2013 20:39 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Pope Frank is the messenger of your doom (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, 14 April 2013 20:46 (eleven years ago) link
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).
― Pope Frank is the messenger of your doom (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, 14 April 2013 20:52 (eleven years ago) link
Not quite sure if 20/20 fits the AC/DC rule, since Timberlake's "Back in Black" is probably "No Strings Attached"
― gentle german fatherly voice (President Keyes), Sunday, 14 April 2013 23:45 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Doctor Casino, Monday, 15 April 2013 01:29 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Pat Finn, Monday, 15 April 2013 01:49 (eleven years ago) link
nah, I love plenty of BSB songs
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 15 April 2013 01:51 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Doctor Casino, Monday, 15 April 2013 01:54 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Pat Finn, Monday, 15 April 2013 01:55 (eleven years ago) link
"MMMbop" is all-time imo.
― timellison, Monday, 15 April 2013 01:55 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Pat Finn, Monday, 15 April 2013 01:57 (eleven years ago) link
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)
― Pat Finn, Monday, 15 April 2013 01:58 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 15 April 2013 01:59 (eleven years ago) link
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
― timellison, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:01 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― gentle german fatherly voice (President Keyes), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:03 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Pat Finn, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:07 (eleven years ago) link
I dunno. Dylan's sixties albums...sound like sixties albums. I don't know why you hold up "sound" as a virtue or blemsih.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:14 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― timellison, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:21 (eleven years ago) link
I'm guess I'm open someone doing something cool with them, though.
― timellison, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:23 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:30 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― mobs of burly teen christgaus (thewufs), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:33 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:34 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Rapper Boy (some dude), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:37 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― timellison, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:37 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:42 (eleven years ago) link
though really U2 are such fucking cockroaches that they may rise again
― da croupier, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:43 (eleven years ago) link
kiss's New Jersey: the four solo albums?
― brimstead, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:48 (eleven years ago) link
¡Catorce! will be the biggest album released next year (xp)
― Rapper Boy (some dude), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:48 (eleven years ago) link
KISS' sales are maddeningly consistent and for the pre-Soundscan albums wildly inflated too.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:52 (eleven years ago) link
Simmons's memoir open about chart manipulation.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:53 (eleven years ago) link
(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.
― mobs of burly teen christgaus (thewufs), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:54 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:54 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― mobs of burly teen christgaus (thewufs), Monday, 15 April 2013 02:56 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Pat Finn, Monday, 15 April 2013 02:59 (eleven years ago) link
here's timelessness. It's played all the time in Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7fxN3g5sLw
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 15 April 2013 03:00 (eleven years ago) link
sweet.
― Pat Finn, Monday, 15 April 2013 03:03 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― I have many lovely lacy nightgowns (contenderizer), Monday, 15 April 2013 03:03 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― timellison, Monday, 15 April 2013 03:05 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 April 2013 03:07 (eleven years ago) link
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 have many lovely lacy nightgowns (contenderizer), Monday, 15 April 2013 03:25 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 April 2013 03:30 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 April 2013 03:33 (eleven years ago) link
yeah Kiss's big commercial accomplishment is to have milked what actually wasn't an especially impressive fanbase for every penny it was worth
― Rapper Boy (some dude), Monday, 15 April 2013 03:42 (eleven years ago) link
for a couple summers there in '76 and '77 they were massive. maybe mostly among teenage boys, but those fuckers get rabid. (tbh, my perspective may be somewhat distorted by my membership in that group at the time.)
― I have many lovely lacy nightgowns (contenderizer), Monday, 15 April 2013 03:50 (eleven years ago) link
well kiss's New Jersey "moment" in terms of cultural cachet was def. 78-79, maybe starting with Alive 2 and culminating in Unmasked. I guess that's a pretty long moment.
― brimstead, Monday, 15 April 2013 03:56 (eleven years ago) link
But yeah the sales manipulation thing + their rep as live act vs album artist throws a wrench in the works.
― brimstead, Monday, 15 April 2013 04:00 (eleven years ago) link
xp yeah, i guess i did mean '77/'78 through '79 or so, things get fuzzy. hell i wasn't even a proper teen until 1980, so my facts clearly need sorting.
― I have many lovely lacy nightgowns (contenderizer), Monday, 15 April 2013 04:04 (eleven years ago) link