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

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

Apropos of nothing, but it seems now that one of the truest death rattles of physical media was seeing tons of unsold Witness CDs clogging shelves in the summer of '17.

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

― ten man poland chasing this means hamsik feasts (breastcrawl), Tuesday, July 6, 2021 1:11 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

not really arguing with your overall point, just suggesting that even if it is, relative to spotify, a better indicator, it's really not an ideal one.

Katy Perry somehow has more Twitter followers than almost anyone mentioned here (except for Bieber)

her empire knows no bounds

You would think Perry's audience had definitely shrunk, but she's still pulling almost 37 mil. monthly listeners on Spotify

Bon Jovi themselves have over 19M (just under GnR at 20M, well over Poison at 4M), which seems not bad, considering their comparative age.

"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

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Tuesday, July 6, 2021 2:28 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

SWISH

Actually that should be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGk5fR-t5AU

Culture II feels like a classic New Jersey at this point

With all the clickfarms, AI bots and payola around streaming/social media it’s getting really hard to asses popularity/cultural relevance with actual humans. Someone with a million followers could have 100k, 10k or 1k real people as fans, nobody knows. Someone with 100M streams on Spotify could have 50M real clicks to play the song by actual people, or could just have paid to have Spotify inject the song 99M times into Discover playlists.

You could fall back to ‘real cash spent’ on tickets & collectibles but that overestimates the popularity of artists that have found a way to extract huge sums out of a small following of old & wealthy superfans vs artists where a billion real kids click on a spotify/youtube/tiktok link that yields the artist $3.50.

Maybe it’s all about counting artist t-shirts when walking through town.

"Culture II feels like a classic New Jersey at this point"

100%

"Maybe it’s all about counting artist t-shirts when walking through town."

That actually doesn't seem like a bad metric! Like, wearing a Migos t-shirt in 2017 pre-Culture II would be a very different thing than wearing one in 2021. Maybe "one should feel faintly embarrassed to wear the artist's merch" should be part of the definition...

On reflection, though, what WERE the expectations of Bon Jovi in 1989? Did even their most fervent fans think that they were going to suddenly turn into Springsteen, U2 or Metallica? I was 14 in 1986 and Bon Jovi already seemed pretty hollow to me at their height, and I even read their Rolling Stone cover story.
I was also thinking that, as a listener ages, they realize that decline in quality is almost inevitable past a certain point in an artist's career, so their expectations change.

Sidebar: The New Jersey of NFTs

why are these sentences i have to read pic.twitter.com/ocIxIhVLlf

— Laura Hudson (@laura_hudson) July 6, 2021

the fact that people are unironically discussing Migos in a t-shirt context clearly demonstrates how far the mighty have fallen

anyway, enjoy your entirely wholesome New Jersey buffet, folx!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPI-mRFEIH0

I was also thinking that, as a listener ages, they realize that decline in quality is almost inevitable past a certain point in an artist's career, so their expectations change.

one thing to keep in mind is that NJ status does not require the artists to REALLY fall off the map completely, become punchlines, die in obscurity etc. most of the names from the poll list are still very well known and even well regarded... just (if they kept on releasing albums) it's pretty clear there's a classic period and the later stuff. many people who bought t-shirts in the heyday will continue to wear them, perhaps only gradually realizing that the t-shirt no longer represents a "current" band to most eyes. meanwhile die-hard fans will find lots to enjoy in the later stuff, and appear on forums to review the newest records as they drop. the act has just lost the aura and centrality of being one of the biggest things in the world --- and, somehow, part of losing it took place right under their noses, in an album that seemed at the time like another key pillar in their undeniable monument.

On reflection, though, what WERE the expectations of Bon Jovi in 1989? Did even their most fervent fans think that they were going to suddenly turn into Springsteen, U2 or Metallica?

If you mean Robert Hilburn singing their praises, probably not. By any other measure, I think the answer may be yes. In 2021, Bon Jovi have more monthly Spotify listeners than all three of those artists fwiw.

NJ is also their highest-rated album on RYM!

Perhaps dropping a New Jersey is a better long term strategy than dropping a Tunnel of Love, a Rattle & Hum, or a Load

Keep The Faith may not have sold as many records as Achtung Baby, but each one of those buyers went on to open a Spotify account.

Travis "The Invisible Band" - glowing reviews, straight to #1, ended up selling a lot less than "The Man Who" and they never had a hit after it.

Perhaps dropping a New Jersey is a better long term strategy than dropping a Tunnel of Love, a Rattle & Hum, or a Load

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61hPHqgn4cL.jpg

Did even their most fervent fans think that they were going to suddenly turn into Springsteen, U2 or Metallica? I was 14 in 1986 and Bon Jovi already seemed pretty hollow to me at their height, and I even read their Rolling Stone

the fact you read a Rolling Stone article means you weren't even close to their core fanbase

also U2 and Metallica weren't legacy acts at that point. how could anyone think that Bon Jovi would "turn into" bands that were themselves almost at an identical place in their career? (following up a huge 86/87 breakthrough album than turned them into huge stars)

and really at the time it would have been far more plausible that Bon Jovi would have Metallica's career rather than vice versa

I wasn't talking about relative popularity or career arcs, just that it seems to me that Bon Jovi was already on a very narrow track of making pop-metal with rootsy overtones. Nobody was expecting them to go acoustic, or messianic, or heavy, so ultimately how disappointed could their audience have been with more of the same?

There's a lot of acoustic/country material and Springsteen homage on NJ, actually. The first few songs are not that representative.

Sure, but no-one was expecting them to do Nebraska, or even Tunnel of Love.

Oh yeah, no, they weren't going to make a Tracy Chapman record or anything. As a 9yo in 1988, I think I can say I was Bon Jovi's target audience and New Jersey did not disappoint.

I think Hello Nasty is a potential New Jersey; I think Pauls/Check/Communication is central to their canon in a way that HN feels outside of - after the millennium they felt just “there” in a way that they weren’t before really (and is reflected with the response to To the 5 Boroughs)

(HN also their longest album)

It didn't help that 5 Boroughs came out 6 years later

I loved Hello Nasty, a bit surprised how much I liked it. It kicked off a long-delayed deep dive in to Lee Perry. But also it left me feeling hollow enough that by the time T5B came out, I didn't feel the need to explore. I'd have been happy if they just released instro jams like The Mix Up after that, collab'ing with Tommy Guerrero and the like. It was a NJ for me for sure.

and really at the time it would have been far more plausible that Bon Jovi would have Metallica's career rather than vice versa

More than most mega-platinum, Bon Jovi seemed to quickly mount a very effective defensive position that maintained a large sector of their core fans, eg Gen X gals who missed big hair. They let go of the smoke-machine/single entendre/chugging bottles of Jack Daniels side of glam pretty quickly to focus on the romantic.

Wonder if this metaphor is limited somewhat by the fact that Bon Jovi were unredeemably awful throughout their career.

and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate

At the time of NJ, Metallica had zero pop crossover, that came two years later with the Black album.

"One" made the top 40: https://www.billboard.com/music/Metallica/chart-history/HSI . The video was a major event in my Grade 6 class. But yeah, not Bon Jovi level.

Hello Nasty seems like a classic New Jersey to me

Yeah, I think Hello Nasty comes pretty damn close. I was living on campus over the summer it was released and it was inescapable for at least 6-10 months. It felt huge for awhile, even admitting that a college campus gives a pretty skewed demographic. It was played at nearly every party and I remember one weekend, shortly before school started in the fall, walking home from work and hearing songs from it blaring out of every third house party. And it's pretty hard to dispute that, as beloved as they still may be, they never reached that level of ubiquity again/

Hello Nasty feels more like a late career dip. If they'd stayed with Def Jam and tried to make a Licensed to Ill 2 in '89 that would probably have been a New Jersey.

Is there such a thing as an "honest" New Jersey, dedicated to art and "genuine self-expression"? Does the phrase always smack of complacent pandering?

New Jerseys: the last refuge from rockist authenticity

Disagree with 'Hello Nasty', it was indeed a huge event album but more like a comeback album after a 4-year absence. It's not like they were riding a wave of anticipation after 'Ill Communication' made them thd biggest band on earth.

Way upthread, I tried to argue that Hello Nasty sort of avoided NJ-dom in unusual ways. The goofiness of the videos in particular made all the Hello Nasty hits feel sort of halfway like novelty hits, not "event" releases. As well, it wasn't really surprising in any way that the next album didn't connect - as 1980s old-school rappers, they were effectively living on borrowed time. Very few others of their generation were still racking up hits in the early 00s! The miracle was that they'd successfully remained relevant and popular as long as they had, in large part by changing up their sound a couple of times already.

In any case, unless you're Boston, six years is a lonnnng time between albums for the NJ feeling to be there. By 2004, the new album couldn't in any sense be riding the momentum of 1998-era Beastie mania - if it had succeeded it would have been clearly as a comeback album.