BEST/MOST "BON JOVI'S NEW JERSEY" ALBUM EVER

Hurting the center of our misunderstanding is there are two threads on the subject more than a year old you haven't read.

Too soon to say what late 90s early 00s bands will enjoy a nostalgia boom. Not like hall and Oates and journey reappreciations were always a given.

Xpost for a rock album Monster is ridiculously, presumably somewhat intentionally, stiff.

Its so fucked up, but I am a fan nonetheless.

Hurting, part of this might also be to do with 'legacy' - if you weren't there at the time, have you really had much opportunity to *hear* I'll Be There For You, let alone grow fond of it? I know I haven't. New Jerseys are sales monsters that turn out to contribute nothing essential to a band's package or its text, no reason why you should ever even need to know they exist

I guess because I was there at the time, it's hard for me to conceive of New Jersey as this empty, big at the time but ultimatley forgotten follow-up record, at least not to a degree that contrasts so greatly with some kind of lasting "legacy" left by Slippery When Wet. In fact I'd say the difference in quality between the hits on Slippery and New Jersey is not all that huge. I feel like true Bon Jovi fans, the ones that make it so Bon Jovi DOES still sell out huge venues, probably dig the New Jersey hits very very much, and don't think of them as relics from some lesser follow-up record. And otherwise I think we're largely talking about people who like doing Living on a Prayer at karaoke. I read the other thread. I increasingly think the premise is kind of silly, and has a lot to do with your individually skewed idea of a band based on your temporal relationship to them.

this whole phenomenon being named after New Jersey cracks me up because an old friend of mine used to, invariably, at any mention of Bon Jovi say something New Jersey and how that was such a big classic album and i'd always be like "really? it seems like the really big songs were on Slippery When Wet," without me ever having looked at the sales figures or chart positions to really authoritatively know that. similarly, my dad used to say Tusk was the Fleetwood Mac album that was the giant blockbuster that ruled the charts for ages, which really confused me for a good long while.

the mere suggestion of Metallica's Black Album is ridiculous -- it's the highest selling album of the SoundScan era, nothing else since 1991 has moved as many units. it's practically Thriller.

It does have several enduring songs, which I guess disqualifies it, but at the same time it felt/feels like the record that signaled their descent into becoming pointless short-haired alt rockers. I guess Load is the better choice for them. I don't think the premise is silly, but I actually think some of these are much better New Jerseys than New Jersey is.

none of these are exact. for instance, there was an instant (early internet) negative reaction to Load from Metallica fans that NJ did not endure from Bon Jovi fans.

The Black Album was more of an It Was Written where an artist tweaks their style and achieves huge success while simultaneously alienating some of their old fans.

On that other thread we went from the initial "EVERY multi-platinum artist has their own New Jersey" to this nit-picky narrow definition.

I've listened to most of'em and ranked'em. What can ya do. I had time to kill.

dammmmmmmn

ranking feels pretty plausible to me, tho i fear i lack the stick-to-it-iveness to actually repeat the experiment. bravo.

Noice. Glad to see that I'm not the only one using his period of self-isolation to trudge through musical mud (currently working my way through an array of previously-unheard pop albums from 1990).

True Colors is maybe the most truly disappointing of that lot. Such a sadly-massive decline.

oooh which 1990 pop albums?

I should check out the Bone Thugs-N-Harmony album.

I bumped yr thread from a few weeks back to address that very question!