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

Pearl Jam have no NJ

Maybe it's not a New Jersey by definition, but Riot Act sure is a fucking drag.

Tougher Than Leather definitely feels like a New Jersey especially being caught up in the passage of an era

Good run dmc post

Bon Jovi: These Days (their These Days, kicks off w/a song called "Hey God")

Run-DMC: Down With The King (their These Days, all about God)

Good post, I'm buying it: Tougher Than Leather is a NJ. I'm also on board with Hello Nasty. Pearl Jam had a very different career arc where they had an absolute smash debut with almost overnight huge mainstream superstardom, and their whole subsequent career was a managed decline where they successfully cultivated their (slowly) diminishing/ageing flock of devoted fans.

Prefecture's argument for Tougher Than Leather is excellent. Hats off for putting all that together.

Rowdy! I thank you and the thread for giving me the vocabulary to explain this phenomenon.

I doubt anyone thought the album was hollow and augured a downturn.

It didn't debut at #55, though: it debuted near the bottom of the Billboard 200 on the basis of vinyl sales, then catapulted to #1 the following week, still the biggest leap in history.

"Better Man" and "Corduroy" were on album rock radio for yeeaaaars.

I'd feel better about No Code, but, again, the band deliberately experimented and deliberately wanted their fan base shorn. Not quite the same as a Fore! or Spellbound offering exactly the same as their predecessors.

uh correction:

It didn't debut at #1, though: it debuted at #55 on the basis of vinyl sales

"Better Man" is a concert favorite still, as is "Corduroy" and "Nothingman". lots of fans (me included) adore that album.

the 'hits' weren't as big, but the main difference is that Pearl Jam sort of intentionally sought to go a less commercial direction after Ten, so the hits were always going to be smaller in stature. Vs kind of hedged its bets in that regard, but Vitalogy definitely moved them further into less commercial territory.

I don’t know, as a college student at the time at a midwestern school (so absolutely the target audience) it was an undeniable event upon release, but ultimately had fewer hits/memorable songs than VS. and it had “Bugs”, which may be you all’s fave track but, again, not in the overwhelmingly white midwestern college milieu I was in. Although looking at the charts I see No code debuted at #1 and the fell off very quickly.

I mean, I was also a college sophomore at the time in a midwest state school and even though people clowned on "Bugs" and "Stupid Mop", I can assure you that none of my PJ worshipping friends found that album hollow. It was inescapable and I would argue that it spawned more "classic" PJ anthems than even Vs.

OTM. Their best album imo.

For the Biggest Rock Band in the World to release "Bugs" on a hotly anticipated album is some Bowie-level shit.

I can't remember if it was the week before or after the release of Vitalogy, but some enterprising pranksters chalked all over campus that PJ was playing at our basketball arena and that tickets would be on sale at 10:00 a.m. that Friday. I think the official count given was around 450 people in line before someone from the ticketing office finally got hipped to what happened and came out to disappoint the throngs. Miss those pre-internet gags sometimes.

haha college kids always used to do shit like that.

the one at my school was "we are paying people $50 to do a in-person study with one of our psychologists" and direct us to the middle of the student union where obviously nobody would show up other than the people who pranked us to laugh at us.

Vitalogy is way too singular to be a New Jersey.

Ok if “hollowness” is meant to be more a creative bankruptcy rather than “a feeling on the part of the listener that the hitmaking days are over“ (which is more how I had it) then I will readily admit Vitalogy is not a New Jersey.

"we are paying people $50 to do a in-person study with one of our psychologists"

I hope it was “Sexual Dysfunction Study” or something like that!

I mean Pearl Jam stayed in pretty regular rotation on rock radio through Yield though, "Given to Fly" and "Wishlist" were all over the place. after that point is where even that started to dry up. and from Merkin Ball, "I Got Id" was a HUGE song on rock radio.

it's hard to argue a New Jersey when the band itself is intentionally trying to make themselves less accessible, which Bon Jovi was decidedly not trying to do.

I feel like maybe if Pearl Jam's trajectory was Vitalogy-Vs-Ten-No Code, then maybe you'd have an argument for No Code.

or _Spellbound_ offering _exactly_ the same as their predecessors.

hmm apparently I had a somewhat diff opinion in 2019:

Didn't Pearl Jam kind of intentionally seek a lower profile after VS by writing less commercial music? And attacking Ticketmaster so they couldn't tour and not building on momentum?

It's a NJ in that the mainstream definitely recoiled a bit from Vitalogy. people loved "Better Man", but despite being nominated for a Grammy, I didn't know anybody who gaf about "Spin the Black Circle" or "Tremor Christ" more than a month after release. Or anybody who is a mega PJ fan who cares about them now.

Buuut critics and the devoted PJ fans were definitely warmer to Vitalogy. Lots of setlist staples from that one. Some say it's their fav!

I guess it fits though, as far as hype goes, it definitely felt like the last PJ album mainstream rock fans anticipated, and you could feel the "who cares" vibe when MTV was trying to help promote No Code.

― master of nuggets (Neanderthal), Tuesday, December 10, 2019 7:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

Ok if “hollowness” is meant to be more a creative bankruptcy rather than “a feeling on the part of the listener that the hitmaking days are over“ (which is more how I had it) then I will readily admit Vitalogy is not a New Jersey.

I'm not going to argue with your personal response to the record, but "a feeling on the part of the listener that the hitmaking days are over" is so far removed from my experience with that record and how others I knew at the time responded. Between "Better Man", "Corduroy", "Immortality", "Not For You", "Spin the Black Circle" and "Nothingman" getting massive amounts of airplay on alt-rock radio, it really felt like a band at their peak, who could do no wrong. It was still true the following summer when I saw them at Soldier Field and Chicago was lousy with Q101 "Not For You" billboards.

he Paula Abdul album?
― KEEP HONKING -- I'M BOBOING (Boring, Maryland)

pree-cise-ly

Spin the Black Circle actually *won* a Grammy

"I don't know what this means. I don't think it means anything."

I forgot about "Immortality", yeah, that one was big on modern rock radio at the time. my friend, who like me was just learning guitar, kept playing it when I'd play alongside him.

lol I forgot about "Black Circle" winning the Grammy... of all the songs on that album too...

I'm also on board with Hello Nasty.

How???

Don't you tell him to stop!

Hindsight is 20/20 and, in retrospect, Bang! Pow! Boom! was the Insane Clown Posse's very own New Jersey.

surprised Insane Clown Posse has never been mentioned in this thread tbh

I hear their fans are called "Juggalos"

Every huge artist has "Juggalos"

a fanbase that is its own subculture but ultimately feels a bit hollow? i think i can see it

not hollow - filled with faygo

For real, they were a beloved underground unit, one of the horrorcore scene's best kept secrets, and when 'Miracles' dropped, a lot of people hailed their open embrace of pop rap as a quantum leap forward, but thinking back on it now, I think it's pretty obvious that the ensuing memes were a harbinger of the decline.

fucking New Jerseys, how do they work

Cat person? Is that a New Jersey?

I think there's a case to be made for Carrie Underwood's Carnival Ride as a New Jersey. It's hard to imagine, but her debut Some Hearts was the biggest selling album of 2006 in the U.S.--ten million copies sold worldwide and 8x Platinum in the Death-of-the-CD era. And it wasn't due just to American Idol visibility but the megahit "Before He Cheats." She seemed poised not to just be a country star but a crossover pop star.

So in 2008 there was a lot of industry anticipation for her follow-up. And it did...just fine. #1 debut. 4 million sold. A few #1 country hits that made a showing on the pop charts. But it was pretty a standard 2008 Nashville album aimed at country radio and felt pretty much like a retread of the debut, just not quite as good. A lot of pop fans peeled off and each of her successive albums sold about a million less than the last.

Only one of the singles is even in her Spotify top ten (All American Girl, #6) "Last Name" was a bad attempt to duplicate the badass vibe of "Before He Cheats."

But as a career move it was probably a success, as it cemented her as a country performer, not someone who would go pop (like Taylor) and she's still one of the biggest stars in the genre.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrolli/2021/09/07/drakes-certified-lover-boy-smashes-spotify-records-as-it-heads-for-biggest-debut-of-2021/?sh=4733b23f508f

After listening to it a few times he may finally have reached his New Jersey !

Was going to say, I think I've incorrectly called the new Drake a New Jersey like 3 times in this thread, but if this isn't one then he's never going to have one

you know what, I finally thought of one - Emotional by Falco. at least in Germany it was. the album hit #1, the singles all did alright, but everything about it was way over the top and strange and his next album sold like...a tenth as many copies

The impending release of 30 will perhaps answer whether or not Adele will join the NJ club.

New Coldplay album definitely feels like a potential NJ

So that would make--let me see here--Everyday Life their SWW?

don't think it really fits, the previous album was their least successful ever bc it was the least pop-oriented thing they'd done in a long time & they made relatively little effort to promote it. this new one has given them their biggest hit in a while by attaching themselves to bts - the factor there is clearly bts not hype from their previous album

there's two really weird things about the new one though, it ends with a 10 minute prog epic produced by max martin, & ilx favourites KING are all over it