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

Dulcinea

yeah the idea of the 4 kiss solo albums... Like, DUH, OF COURSE it failed, wtf were they thinking? I agree that Kiss is sorta disqualified due to all the stuff you guys mentioned. the 4 solo thing was such a ridiculous overreach, though, kind of unique. But yeah Kiss is basically a comic book so the usual rules of releasing albums (ex: don't release 4 solo albums simultaneously) don't apply so cleanly.

i'm sure ppl even then were like these things fucking suck ass except for New York Groove

ace has some other jams. rip it out, snowblind, uh...

KISS; the Donald Trump of Rock!

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, Sunday, April 14, 2013 10:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think this might be reformulated just in terms of when the artists peaked relative to their fans' relationships to music - - - N*Sync sold a bazillion records to 8-16-year-olds, JT solo sold a bazillion records to 13-21-year-olds (often, but not always the same people) (generalizing wildly here about all this), and I think that makes a difference in terms of what people, later in life, are likely to put in "best of" lists, regardless of how much they actually might still enjoy or relate to the music.

That is, when you're 40 and editing a popular-press webzone, you might still jam to "Pop" but unless you have really absorbed the poptimist critique the tendency is going to be to use that album for the "chuckle, here's 10 guilty pleasures" article, Justified for the "hey, shocker, this still holds up!" article, and FS/LS to actually go on the Best Albums Of The 2000s countdown. Some of that's rockism and art-historical teleology talking ("mature work," "addresses adult themes," "darker"), but it's also I think that people are more willing to frame the music they danced to in college as Actually Good versus the music they danced to in middle school as You Had To Be There, or Secretly Good, or whatever.

But this is all just me writing a general theory around the case of Justin Timberlake, since I graduated high school in 2000 and associate "Rock Your Body" with grown-up partying and actual up-close-dancing with a girl named Jamie who was the hottest thing in my world at that moment, and for about forty-five seconds of my life feeling like a competent, smooth flirt who was hitting the right moves at the right movement and pulling off the eye contact and everything.

And then "I Like The Way You Move" came on and I couldn't find the rhythm and the moment passed, but damn, do I still dig both those songs.

did you have her naked by the end of that song?

never, never.

Oh god! 'Rock Your Body' is playing RIGHT NOW at the coffee shop.

xpost that's a good analysis doctor casino, i wouldn't disagree with any of that.

so the New Jersey is the album that rides in on a wave of rose-colored goodwill generated by its predecessor and mimics its successes enough to tap that enthusiasm but in retrospect you must admit the thrill is gone

It wasn't Lonesome Jubilee that foreshadowed Mellencamp's decline, but the follow up Big Daddy. Remeber "Pop Singer"? From their on out Mellencamp''s albums got more serious and even ponderous. But Jubilee is an excellent album.

does goat's head soup count for this? there are some great tracks on it, but it definitely marks the end of their "classic" era.

ah, sorry i see that's been covered already

commercially Lonesome Jubilee is the only album that could plausibly qualify as Mellencamp's New Jersey, and someone cooouuld argue the album's two top tens ("Paper In Fire" and "Check It Out") from that album haven't stayed in the public consciousness like his earlier songs that had similar chart peaks ("Pink Houses," "Small Town"). But the fact that Mellencamp made such a self-conscious turn away from the marketplace with Big Daddy does cloud things.

think "Cherry Bomb" was the other top ten (can't check Wiki now) but it's understandable: both start with "Ch"

Mellencamp returned to pop singer records on Whenever We Wanted and Human Wheels but this was the point at which the VH-1 and teen audience parted company. "Get a Leg Up" a minor hit. He wouldn't score another top five (his last) until "Wild Night" in '94.

yeah I switched the "ch" singles, sorry. point stands, though - what keeps it from being an obvious New Jersey is that some people think it's better than Scarecrow, and that the "career decline" was self-inflicted after jubilee.

did we mention INXS's X?

I think so, though it only went 2xplat so it didn't qualify for the poll

god, I hope The Knife's album doesn't end up as this. (I really like it, but then I also really liked Born This Way.)

That Shins album that debuted at #1 on the Billboard chart
Sigur Ros' ()
LCD Soundsystem's first album (challops! Yes it was a hit, but there was nothing on there as good as the singles that had already been released, and the magic was already gone)

interpol - our love to admire?

Men at Work, Cargo

Queens of the Stone Age "lullabies to paralyze"
Liz Phair "Whitechocolatespaceegg" or whatever
Tha Carter 4 def
REM's is "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," not "Monster."
Smashing Pumpkins' is "Adore," not "Mellon Collie"

Beck is kinda huge and he doesn't have a New Jersey.

Actually Beck's might be "The Information." I know a lot of people that really love "Guero."

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_maim9sAJRO1qdtw7so4_250.gif

xp My idea of a career decline doesn't include a record as good as Sound of Silver tbh

REM's is "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," not "Monster."

it didn't go multiplatinum

Yeah, I definitely think Monster is the New Jersey of R.E.M.'s catalogue.

Guess you could throw Hail To The Thief into this, too.

I haven't read the whole thread but that bono gif makes me wonder : what was U2's already ?

This was disputed repeatedly, "Rattle & Hum" fits in the sense of "huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow" but "career decline" doesn't quite hold up. Apparently it's "How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb."

hum. I don't know anybody who owns or likes "dismantle" (and I've never listened to it).
I'd rather say "zooropa" or "pop" but maybe it's more linked to my own interest in that band.
anyway, I won't get into the dispute...
thanks for the update !

will "random access memory" be daft punk's "new jersey" ? (or was it "human after all" ?)

I think "dismantle" may actually have been a huge album but just not in the world of anybody I hang out or talk to, see also that stage where you think they aren't popular anymore but are actually way more popular than they were when they had "buzz"

Dismantle, definitely.

HTTF wasn't that much of an event album and In Rainbows is no decline. I think Radiohead managed to rewrite the rock-career script sufficiently to avoid a New Jersey. With the greatest respect to Amnesiac, it was no Slippery When Wet.

every time someone on this thread says what their friends thought about an album that didn't even gold, I kill an angel.

The King Of Limbs may be Radiohead's New Jersey... a huge amount of people were waiting in anticipation for it on the back of In Rainbows and a large percentage of those people were ultimately disappointed. If their next album is shite, then it undoubtedly is The King Of Limbs.

*kills angel*

hey now, KoL went gold

that poor angle, murdered for nothing

much like my speling

yeah, yeah, but the angel still had to die on principle

xp I guess based on Beck's non-platinum status for several of his albums, he's ineligible for a New Jersey.

the idea was to limit the concept to albums and artists that were actually "huge," so that we could nerd out over stats rather than have dinks debating which Apples In Stereo album was the first to suck

that reminds me, This Timeless Turning was totally Sky Cries Mary's New Jersey

no way, everybody at my college radio station was mad excited about Exit At The Axis and I always knew that was poopie and nobody talk about it now, totally their new jersey

isn't Beck kinda huger than whatever weirdo bands you guys are joking about?

"Fugue in D minor" was totally Bach's New Jersey. It was all downhill after that.

Hey now, I am just encouraging what I think is a specifically hilarious fit of pique, no need to get defensive.

haha i realize i'm being ridiculous, believe me. but i'm still going to wail on anybody who either can't grasp the concept, can't bother to read the thread, or check wikipedia to verify their hunches about which albums sold how much. if a chart nerd can't police a chart nerd thread then what's the point in being a chart nerd.

chart groupies

no i'm like creed, i spurn them on route to the stage and then float above the throng