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

I actually am sceptical of the concept as a whole but insofar as it works, my reservation was just with picking TS's biggest album, with probably the most famous hits, as her NJ. Maybe Reputation could work? Idk I never heard all of it.

reputation is certainly the closest taylor has - its hits were more about the momentum from the huge previous album and brought with it the feeling that the gig was up. lover wasn't quite the bottom falling out but still a further decline

xxp If you think this qualifies as Spinal Tap–esque “selective appeal” I don’t know what to tell you:

Upon release, Folklore broke the Guinness World Record for the biggest opening day on Spotify for an album by a female act. Three of its tracks reached the top 10 of the official charts in eight countries, namely "Cardigan", "The 1" and "Exile", the first of which is the album's lead single and marked Swift's sixth number-one song on the US Billboard Hot 100. The album reached number one in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and various others. It was Swift's seventh consecutive number-one album on the US Billboard 200, where it topped for eight weeks and became the best-selling album of 2020.

Folklore was met with widespread critical acclaim (…). Critics found its introspective themes timely for the pandemic and regarded it a bold reinvention of Swift's artistry. The album prominently featured on publications' year-end lists of the best albums of 2020, ranking first on many (…). It won Album of the Year at the 63rd Grammy Awards, making Swift the first female artist in history to win the honor three times.

but at this point she’s become near invisible if you’re either younger or older,

This doesn't check out. Speaking as a parent of a young kid I can tell you that Swift songs are inescapable at any party, fair, school event, indoor recreation space, etc.

Swift has to date no New Jerseys.

"I don't listen to her, she must not be popular."

just an old cardigan

...is all she has

xp

Every Drake album feels like a New Jersey.

wishful thinking

"I don't listen to her, she must not be popular."

I plugged in Drake, Beyonce, and Kanye West for comparison; they all exhibit similar declines (though I don't know who you consider a "culturally relevant" long-term artist, feel free to chose your own). So maybe this is just a Google Trends thing.

(you did list Lemonade as a NJ, so maybe you also consider Beyoncé to be a Spinal Tap case.)

Taylor's Youtube trend over the past year doesn't match Olivia Rodrigo's or Arianna Grande's, but they're about the same as Dua Lipa's

who is Googling these artist names in 2021, anyway

i think the thing is if she didn't pivot with folklore it's likely that reputation would have been her new jersey

Tbf, Keep the Faith was also a multiplatinum album that reached #1 in several countries and had three hit singles. If there has been an appreciable commercial decline post-[i[1989[/i], which sales figures might suggest, the concept might still apply as well as something like this can. I just don't think 1989 would be the NJ.

Except that Reputation kind of landed with a thud upon release, as opposed to feeling more hollow upon repeated listens.

That's subjective - I loved it upon release (I think it's a stronger album than 1989), and with time it's come to feel one of the artistic peaks of her catalog. To me, anyway

(If she didn't "pivot" w/Folklore, I assume Lover would have been her NJ? – splashy but bad lead single; a lot of buzz, but few awards; etc.)

Reactions to Bon Jovi albums were objective otoh.

I thought the idea here was nailing down objective criteria, otherwise what's the point. If someone on here says Purple Rain felt a bit hollow, that's Prince's New Jersey, who can argue?

P much everything in the OP is subjective.

I am 50 and "folklore" was the first Taylor Swift album for which I was aware thanks to media coverage that it was about to come out, the first one I listened to immediately on release, and the first one I've repeatedly listened to all the way through. ("evermore" was the second, for all three.) So from my perspective, as someone who doesn't listen to a ton of chart radio, 2020 was the FIRST time Swift had such a level of media saturation that it reached my eye/ear. (Of course I know "Shake It Off" like everybody else but could not have told you what album it's on.)

My kids and my wife and I are all into it and play it a lot.

If someone on here says Purple Rain felt a bit hollow, that's Prince's New Jersey, who can argue?

Judging from my attempts to make "Automatic For the People is R.E.M.'s New Jersey" happen, a lot of people!

I would vote for NAIHF, but I’m sure it’s been discussed ad nauseum ITT!

I would have said it was obvious it was Monster!

Like, the idea that there's some kind of objective universal rule that can be derived from Bon Jovi's 1988 album New Jersey (which I would probably rate as highly as Slippery When Wet fwiw) is more absurd than people talking about albums that felt a bit hollow to them.

I don’t think it’s a crazy statement that the biggest global artists of 2010-2012 (Swift, Kanye, Beyonce, Perry) have a lower profile ten years later?

I mean the way fame works now is different than in the hair metal days - filter bubbles creating a more loyal fanbase, longer career arcs because marketeers know better how artists can tailor their output better to a maturing fanbase, etc.

OK but Taylor is still gaining new fans, as evidenced by the anecdotes above; I don't think the same is true for Kanye or (maybe) Katy Perry. I think Taylor (and Beyoncé) remain as central to music/culture as it's possible for a long-term artist to be these days.

who is Googling these artist names in 2021, anyway

― r u rolling pop 2021 (morrisp), Tuesday, July 6, 2021 10:26 AM bookmarkflaglink

OMG GOOGLE FOR "TAYLOR" AND FIND NEW JERSEY

You would think Perry's audience had definitely shrunk, but she's still pulling almost 37 mil. monthly listeners on Spotify, her most recent single is doing decent-ish business there (18 mil. spins after six weeks), and her biggest late-model single, "Never Really Over", has racked up higher #s than some of her earlier, theoretically bigger hits.

Yeah I don't know much about her tbh

The latest revive is this thread’s New Jersey.

you can’t really use streaming numbers to straight up compare old songs with newer tracks. Spotify wasn’t nearly as prevalent during Perry’s heyday as it is now.
YouTube views are a more honest metric (but here also, older songs are negatively impacted by things like changes in official artist accounts -
see the relatively low numbers for her first megahits)

for example:
streaming-wise, a recent hit like “Never Really Over” appears to be in a similar league as older blockbusters like “Dark Horse”, “Roar” and “Firework”: 514M vs 803M, 656M and 551M total streams, respectively.

now let’s look at the corresponding YouTube views: “Never Really Over” 142M, decent, you might say, but “Dark Horse” has 3.097M (almost 22x as much), “Roar” 3.380M (almost 24x as much), and even “Firework”, the oldest of this bunch, has 1.317M views in the version currently on YT (9x as much), but actually misses a billion or two (or more), I suspect.

the fact that Perry’s top 10 most streamed songs on Spotify is dominated by older hits does tell you another thing tho: that she has m/l become a “heritage” act - for contrast, look at someone like Justin Bieber: his Spotify top 10 is dominated by his current & recent stuff (“Love Yourself” is the oldest track here, the only one from the Purpose era, which in itself is much more recent than most of the big songs in KPs top 10)

still, I don’t think KP had a New Jersey - PRISM was a simply a big ol’ flop after two hugely successful albums, and she hasn’t recovered from it since.

sorry, biting myself in the ass there. PRISM is the one with “Roar” and “Dark Horse”, follow-up Witness is the one that severely underperformed - but that came as quite a surprise, don’t think most people had already gauged that the gig was up

"I don’t think it’s a crazy statement that the biggest global artists of 2010-2012 (Swift, Kanye, Beyonce, Perry) have a lower profile ten years later?"

Not a weird statement at all (though I'd certainly disagree in most cases with your picks), but, important to remember that not all declines in popularity = a New Jersey... which is what we're talking about here.

YouTube views are a more honest metric (but here also, older songs are negatively impacted by things like changes in official artist accounts -
see the relatively low numbers for her first megahits)

disagree; the scale of # of youtube users between 2010 and now is massive (hundreds of millions > billions)

The latest revive is this thread’s New Jersey.

Every huge message board has its "New Jersey" - a huge event thread that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

what I said is that it's a fairer means of comparing the popularity of older and newer hits of someone like Katy Perry - where the discrepancy is much smaller on YouTube than on Spotify, as the examples I gave you show

"but that came as quite a surprise, don’t think most people had already gauged that the gig was up"

Is it too early to declare Katy Perry's Prism a New Jersey?

― J. Sam, Thursday, May 22, 2014 2:29 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

katy perry otm

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Thursday, May 22, 2014 2:31 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Prism was kind of a bomb: it ultimately only sold 1/4 of what Teenage Dream did, and produced only two #1 singles after everything from the prior set went Top 3.

And then Witness fell off a cliff.

the other problem with streaming is i think Katy Perry has a lot of FB friends and she's msging them each morning to bump her trax but the ~media~ isn't talkin about this

The biggest threads from 2010-2012 have now become heritage threads.

Going back a bit, I had actually started a post about how KP definitely had a shrunken audience and is perhaps now more known for American Idol before I thought to check Spotify only to see that: (A) Her audience is larger than I expected, and (B) It's not (entirely) all about her back catalogue.

sorry, biting myself in the ass there. PRISM is the one with “Roar” and “Dark Horse”, follow-up Witness is the one that severely underperformed - but that came as quite a surprise, don’t think most people had already gauged that the gig was up

You are describing almost to a T the opening post’s definition of an album that qualifies

After two decades of this thread we've finally found a second new jersey.

okay, New Jersey it is then, I should have known better than to venture there anyway, just came here to refute, once and data-driven for all, the notion that Katy is somehow still as popular/successful as she was up to and including “Roar”.

xp

or “Dark Horse” rather - could have sworn that one came before “Roar”, but it didn’t