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

You really can't know if something is a New Jersey until like 7-14 years later.

Wow, Sugarland. I worked selling food/drink at one of their shows in 2010. The most brutal and openly racist crowd I've... ever been in proximity to. Horrible.

I could also see her occupying a kind of middle ground -- a mainstream singer-songwriter with appeal across various audiences (rock, adult-oriented pop, country)... a mode that isn't so popular anymore (at least at that level), but maybe she could pull off.

I mean, there's Pink

“Every seven years, the cicadas shall return; and we shall judge whether another crop of artists has released their New Jersey.”

(xp to bsj)

there are no more new jerseys

if there were we would have to call them newer jerseys

...Or are there now ONLY New Jerseys?

obvious point made elsewhere i'm sure but one of the true New Jersey signs is the fading of the carryover album-to-album enthusiasm that gets the not-rabid fanbase to pick up your album, which is often kind of hard to spot when your rabid fanbase is huge (as Taylor Swift's is currently) and the overall fade is a bit slow and often disguised by other successes.

Like with U2 and their pair of false New Jerseys (Rattle & Hum, POP) which put a temporary dent in their sales (until the more successful actual New Jersey of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb): Achtung Baby brought them back to cultural relevance and huge sales, but they did lose some numbers between it and The Joshua Tree.

Then they steadily lost more sales until All That You Can't Leave Behind, which was in retrospect less a comeback and more of a "it was nice to see that they can still do that, probably don't really *need* to get the next one though..." And then HTDAAB was a "hit" but powered largely by the fanbase and some stragglers and then it went to the discount bins pretty swiftly. The excitement and the sense that U2 had anything left to say had evaporated after that album.

And that's kind of it, the hardcore fans will always remains and maybe such artists put out a single or two that people will passively enjoy (or not), and they'll still have big tours and sell a decent number of albums, but their moment in the spotlight is gone. often times they embrace it and just do their thing (someone like Bowie did that, Prince too it could be argued) but U2 to this day doesn't recognize that the game is up.

“Every seven years, the cicadas shall return; and we shall judge whether another crop of artists has released their New Jersey.”

It's true.

Re. Pink i don’t even know if she has a thread here, maybe the biggest pop superstar that ilm doesn’t care about? I’ve loved all her recent singles.

Maybe this one has been covered, but Black Keys: El Camino?

re: U2: they can still sell out arenas, right? from their POV 'the game' is probably still just going along about like it's been since pop - they're not the biggest band in the universe but they're big enough that they'll never be small in their lifetimes. of course none of that is mutually exclusive with NJ-dom, just that the "career decline" in the thread premise means different things at different scales of huge-artist-ness.

an anecdotal argument for scorpion's jersey-dom is that i know in my feelings is a huge hit and there's some sort of accompanying challenge but i've managed to somehow avoid ever hearing it whereas one dance and hotline bling were inescapable.

Re. Pink i don’t even know if she has a thread here, maybe the biggest pop superstar that ilm doesn’t care about? I’ve loved all her recent singles.

I like some of her stuff quite a bit and her career longevity is impressive as hell.

I think if you can manage one or more fake out or false New Jerseys then you should be immune to a real New Jersey, like having chicken pox as a kid. I dunno, it just doesn’t feel right to me to call U2’s 11th album a NJ.

^+1

U2 is in a kind of unique cultural space being effectively the Last Classic Rock Band

also "Vertigo" is remembered. saw some punk band cover it last week. people remember "uno, dos, tres, catorce."

It would be geographically a bit droll if Bruce Springsteen's NEW JERSEY was NEBRASKA.

Or even GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK, N.J.

Is 'Illinois' Sufjan's indie New Jersey?

Surely not - 'Chicago' is his biggest song? (and I think maybe even still ... his best!)

Again it would be geographically fun if his NEW JERSEY were ... THE BQE.

A lot of people have mentioned The Great Escape, but they had another New Jersey in the shape of 13, which got a huge amount of coverage and hype but was the beginning of Damon writing a lot of meandering, hookless quasi-songs that would come to define his later projects

Great Escape was super popular and had tons of fans - it was one of the records that moved indie/britpop from cult to mainstream status in the UK in the late 90s/early 00s. Many many dreadful records ensued but that Great Escape sound (e.g. Parklife but rockier, sillier and more indulgent) was everywhere for years.

I think Blur are essentially a band for mid-teenagers and each new record coincided with some percentage of their fanbase growing out of them.

Hum. Yeah Great Escape was very popular and had many hits but the idea of the NJ that "the gig is up" is kinda obvious with that one.
It has a end of the party/depressive feeling.

Yes, the point is not these albums were not popular but that they were popular?

I meant, “the gig is up” feeling came from a minority of older fans (self included) but for many more people TGE was the start of something else.

Actually I've just check and you're right, the follow-up to Great Escape, Blur, was their biggest selling album and might then be their NJ !

Not sure how you can say that when "Song 2" is probably their biggest hit?

Like it's in permanent Jock Jam rotation all over the States, at least.

blur doesn’t have a new jersey wtf

A lot of people have mentioned The Great Escape, but they had another New Jersey in the shape of 13, which got a huge amount of coverage and hype but was the beginning of Damon writing a lot of meandering, hookless quasi-songs that would come to define his later projects

― Scritti Vanilli - The Word Girl You Know It's True (dog latin), Thursday, August 30, 2018 1:59 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude a new jersey is not defined entirely by how good you think the music on it is

I mean, there's Pink

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Wednesday, 29 August 2018 18:37 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

o yeah maybe Pink was Boris' New Jersey lol

dude a new jersey is not defined entirely by how good you think the music on it is

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Thursday, August 30, 2018 2:48 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think this whole thread has been people arguing over their own definition of what a 'New Jersey' is. I see it as hype/popularity vs quality. 13 is an okay album with about 50% good songs but you knew they were starting to wind it in, starting to get bored of each other, and lo-and-behold Graham leaves before Think Tank comes out (which sounds more like a Gorillaz album than anything that came before)

ugh then post on a "most overrated album" thread or something, what a NJ is, is not up for grabs, and is certainly not just "overrated" which is a tedious and useless notion anyway

re: U2: they can still sell out arenas, right? from their POV 'the game' is probably still just going along about like it's been since pop - they're not the biggest band in the universe but they're big enough that they'll never be small in their lifetimes. of course none of that is mutually exclusive with NJ-dom, just that the "career decline" in the thread premise means different things at different scales of huge-artist-ness.

I mean, Bon Jovi still fills arenas...

if only there was a one-line definition somewhere of what a NJ is

i think an NJ is when an artist has already blown up, bought into their own hype, have this desire to self-mythologize, but haven't yet clearly defined what this myuthology really is, but it's just something BIG y'know -- and the results are predictably kind of embarrassing (but the numbers are there because the band is hot and put the record out on time and the promo was huge and the tour is scheduled etc etc)

well then that's The Great Escape, although maybe the Blur mythology was fairly well established by then?

yeah but i don't think a New Jersey is necessarily terrible or even critical reviled, it can be good and popular etc but there's this inexpressible sense that the era of this artist is slipping away even as they are super popular at the moment.

― Elrond Hubbard (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 1:23 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well then that's The Great Escape, although maybe the Blur mythology was fairly well established by then?

― Scritti Vanilli - The Word Girl You Know It's True (dog latin), Thursday, August 30, 2018 7:28 AM (forty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel like the record after it has to be where everyone catches on to the fundamental emptiness of the project (aka "the gig is up") and... the s/t subverted that. therefore imo blur has no new jersey

"blown up, bought into own hype, desire to self-mythologize" is more sophomore slump territory -- a NJ is for artists who have gotten past the sophomore slump phase, are stars, and it seems entirely plausible that they might be stars indefinitely -- a feeling that starts fading at the time the NJ. that's the point

(by which Scorpion might plausibly qualify, but every one of Drake's albums since like 2011 seemed like it might qualify)

Did “New Jersey” feel that way at the time (to Jovi fans)?

katherine otm

I mean I'm just quoting the beginning of the thread

Did “New Jersey” feel that way at the time (to Jovi fans)?

― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Thursday, August 30, 2018 9:33 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

new jersey came out in 88 and yeah at that point they were still HUGE, obviously slippery when wet was this insane phenomenon

but by 88 it was like they were getting passed by on both sides, Appetite for Destruction was out and just seemed like a different beast more visceral and badass, on the other side Def Leppard Hysteria was still going strong and seemed like the ultimately 80s pop metal statement in some ways

plus thrash (metallica, anthrax etc) was getting bigger and more popular the whole pop metal thing felt like the air was going out of it slightly

this sounds like there's also a genre component, where the wave that helped one reach megastar status is now cresting. (by which Gaga would qualify, Drake not so much)

at the time it felt like New Jersey was released very soon after Slippery When Wet, like the exhausting hype of the previous record / tour hadn't wound down yet when new hype was trying to build