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

I was writing aloud about 30 upthread, my thinking is that it essentially is her NJ but already the sales are very much a step-down for her, even if that's more indicative of how well albums sell now (it is afaik the biggest-selling album of the last year, in the UK, US and worldwide).

I prefer Rhythm of the Saints to Graceland but I really love batucada. In the UK/Europe it was actually an unlikely (and obviously unrelated) false start to many batucada-house type tracks which were mainstream hits in their own right for the remainder of the 90s. If only he had a dance/downtempo/whatever remix of The Obvious Child made (it's 1990 Paul!) and stuck on a 12" he'd have been ahead of the curve.

Certainly looks like it: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F02z4b_8

Two peaks for her career-defining albums, then a slow descent.

Also, interesting to see how her peers, the superstars-of-ten-years-ago are all converging: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F02z4b_8,%2Fm%2F06mt91,%2Fm%2F05mt_q,%2Fm%2F01mpq7s

I think "Freeek!" is the New Jersey of singles for GM, one of the most expensive music videos of all time, widely hyped, but no matter how much money they spent on advertising it just wasn't a great song

I've always been quite mystified by "Freeek!" and "Shoot the Dog", his only singles for Polydor/Universal, two years before the album itself arrived. I get the impression they were marketed or at least hyped more around their videos, which no doubt got big music TV exposure (Freeek! was an early - maybe the first? - Channel 4 video premiere) even though the singles themselves actually didn't chart amazingly well. It got to number 7 while STD reached number 12, both siding down the chart very quickly. Not bad business by any means but a relative step down for GM (no doubt the tabloid 'storm' around STD engulfed that song altogether). And then Amazing/Patience come out and it's like they'd never happened even though they're on the album??

That said, "Freeek!" does appear very high in the Now 52 track list a full four months after its release so maybe it did have some radio legs?

That said, "Freeek!" does appear very high in the Now 52 track list a full four months after its release so maybe it did have some radio legs?

You don't think labels paid for placement on those compilations? Or, at the very least, there were negotiations around what they wanted vs what they could get?

Well that's the thing, Now albums could often be messy, but it's still quite anomalous to have a song that fell out the top 40 over three months before as track 3, in as late as 2002 after a more coherent house style had gradually seeped in (and then Shoot the Dog never even appeared. Nor did Amazing, but Flawless did). (Now 52 FTR is a total mess anyway, cross-licensing meant a lot of the period's biggest hits couldn't appear so it's an edition with a lot of wholes.

All of which is a niche tangent obviously but yeah my point is a late appearance that high up a Now album may - or may not - suggest it lasted a while on the radio (IIRC the 19th most played song on UK radio in 2002 was Travis No. 18 smash Flowers in the Window so not inconceivable).

holes* (oh no am I about to have another half-conscious day of typos..)

From the most recent Breihan Number Ones column:

My friend and colleague Chris Molanphy has a thing that he calls the AC/DC rule. It’s based on the idea that Back In Black was the gigantic breakthrough AC/DC album, the one that sold an insane number of copies. But because Back In Black sold all those copies over a long stretch of time, the follow-up album For Those About To Rock We Salute You was the one that finally took AC/DC to #1 on the American album charts — mostly thanks to all the people who loved Back In Black.

Definitely a related phenomenon!

Molanphy and I have talked about this more than once. The New Jersey Rule is slightly different.

yeah, it seems a purely numbers things, whereas New Jerseys have the "feel a bit hollow" criteria

^ ^

Actually, For Those About to Rock We Salute You does have a hollow feel about it. It marks an inflection point of not only diminishing commercial returns, but diminishing inspiration. Back in Black is the last of their albums that I would listen to from beginning to end, and what's more, BiB in turn is not nearly as consistent as Highway to Hell. (Admittedly, I do say that as a diehard Bon loyalist.)

Back in Black gets points for being a strong showing after Bon's death, but I agree, Highway to Hell is a much stronger album. Bon was a much better songwriter than Brian Johnson.

"For Those About to Rock", the song, with the cannons and all, has one of the hallmarks of the NJ - a self-consciously anthemic anthem, with the formula starting to show through so it starts to feel hollow, even if it seemed inspired while the band were devising it.

Also, the album is probably little more listened to now than, say, Blow Up Your Video, and sales wise (at least in the US) the bottom really fell out for Flick of the Switch.

"For Those About to Rock" (the song) is like the ultimate victory lap, cannons and all. Like "Start Me Up," it's the rare late career definitive statement of purpose.

For Those About to Rock def seems like it has NJ credentials. See earlier discussion starting here: Every huge artist has their "New Jersey" - a huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

One of my big takeaways from the later points of the thread IIRC was that some in the US see Hello Nasty as an NJ. Major point of difference here because it was easily their biggest album and only the second hip hop album ever to top the charts (after the NJ-ish Wu-Tang Forever). In fact their choatic UK chart peaks for each album are:
7 (Licensed to Ill)
44 (Paul's Boutique)
106 (Check Your Head)
10 (Ill Communication)
1 (Hello Nasty)

i'm from the US and wouldn't consider HN a NJ

it was easily their biggest album

Not even close. Yes, it went #1 in the US, but so did Licensed To Ill, and LTI has sold over 10 million copies; HN has "only" sold 3 million.

I think Westbury is talking about the UK (where HN apparently sold 3x as many copies as LTI).

Shit, you only have to sell 300,000 albums to go platinum in the UK. Those are, like, Canada numbers.

how many Myrrh did it go

"IMO it's not exactly a Fairweather Johnson but that late 80s/early 90s thing of well-promoted, very prolonged but now rather eclipsed follow-ups to still well-loved mid-80s albums, cf. The Seeds of Love, The Sensual World, Us, The Rhythm of the Saints et al."

That put me in mind of Yes' Big Generator, which came out four years after 90125 but didn't sell nearly as well. I honestly have no idea how it was perceived at the time though.

I have the impression most of the people who bought 90125 were only vaguely aware that Yes had been releasing records for years, and from their point of view Generator was just one of many unpopular follow-ups to huge 80s hits. Just like On Every Street up the thread - I've always assumed that most of the people who bought Brothers in Arms were only vaguely aware that the band had released music before that.

I learn from Discogs.com that Generator was recorded at "Lark Recording Studios, Caramati, Italy; Sarm East & West Recording Studios, London; Air Recording Studio, London; Southcombe Recording Studio, Los Angeles; Westlake Audio, Los Angeles; Sunset Sound, Los Angeles" so it obviously wasn't cheap. I assume each bandmember used a different studio because they were sick of each other. It was one of those enormous and probably cocaine-fuelled productions from a time when record labels had a lot of spare money.

I remember that the next album, Union, had something like nine keyboard players on it, in addition to Rick Wakeman, whose contributions were mostly mixed out. Why did they hate each other? I've never read a bad word about Jon Anderson, although he's prone to flights of fancy, and Rick Wakeman can at least put on a matey act. Bill Bruford seemed to genuinely enjoy playing the drums. Were they scared Trevor Rabin was going to put them out of a job? Was Chris Squire really mean? Was it Trevor Horn, taking revenge for being kicked out - but the band fell apart before he got involved. I just don't know.

"Love Will Find a Way" earned a lot of MTV play.

Bruford has been critical of Jon Anderson's business practices in interviews, saying that he liked making big money deals with the record companies that had negative consequences when chart success wasn't forthcoming (to the effect of "Jon is now trapped on the music business treadmill"). He suggested that when they were recording Union that they all paid more attention to the catering than the music.
Admittedly, Bruford also said that his middle-class concept of money differed from Anderson's working-class approach.

Anderson reportedly dodgy as fuck
Squire reportedly irresponsible as fuck
Howe reportedly a miserable git
Bruford reportedly a pompous ass
Alan White reportedly a nice guy
Ditto Wakeman, but with added ego
Rabin I dunno but it sure beat his floundering solo career

In reply to GM’s Freeek being possibly the first Channel 4 video premiere;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M-bxpuinMA

Ah I meant the specific Channel 4 strand, with its own listing in the TV guide and what not, but I'm not sure exactly when those started. The Tube went so far with premiering videos they sometimes went out of their way to help make them.

I’m sure ‘Thriller’ and ‘Blue Jean’ had separate premieres on Channel 4, not as part of The Tube. It was nearly 40 years ago so my memory is hazy.

YouTube uploads suggest those were both The Tube too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXMBBvQBIvI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TvNWVRxc8

Yes, but they were a special show dedicated to the premier of them and not just a strand within the regular show. See Tube Show Extra for Bowie on 28th September 1984.

Fair enough :)

I remember coming back from the pub early to watch it. Should have stayed out 🥺

I didn’t know Check Your Head only got up to #106 in the UK.

insulted that spotify thinks I want to celebrate 25 years of be here now, has it actually been reappraised as something other than shite lately or is this just marketing?

twitter suggests there are real people who exist who do think it's a masterpiece. takes all sorts

Have never been too sold on this as a total NJ (that's as I don't know what it's like in the US) but can any NJ deluxe 'beat' this..
https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/guns-n-roses-use-your-illusion-box-sets/

I read about that, and laffed / eyerolled at the fact that you still can’t just buy a basic package of the two CDs (maybe w/bonus tracks for each).

Nor can you just buy a basic package of all the good tracks from the two CDs without the filler.

Even better!

They actually made a single-disc Use Your Illusion album for distribution at Walmart back in the day, but it notably omits You Could Be Mine!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_Your_Illusion

Wow – it also omits "So Fine"!

We had a collective crack at compiling a single-disc of the best cuts many years back

come and help make "the greatest rock record of the 90's" out of Use Your Illusion 1 and 2

Cool, thx – I'll post my tracklist over dere (I'm actually revisiting both albums right now & culling a playlist...)

(no way I'll be able to keep it to a single-disc length, tho... the long tracks are essential!)

(Unrelated to anything except my eagle eyes: At some point AMG have lowered II to a 3 while I is still a 4.5, the similar reviews remain, it's Sparkle in the Rain/Once Upon a Time all over again)

AMG be ripping off the fucking kids while they be paying their hard-earned money to read about the bands they want to know about

My dad has a story that the local's jukebox, when there still was one, used to play songs at random in the early 90s if no one was using it and once it played Get in the Ring as a coach of OAPs came in for dinner, who all promptly complained that they were being told to suck my [page missing] and suchlike. For this reason alone UYI cannot tick the NJ 'vacant retread of its predecessor' box.