"EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW" AKA the UK version

keep the faith was huge in the UK though. They actually started playing stadiums here at that time and still do.

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:04 (14 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the almighty wikipedia says slippery when wet is 3x platinum in the uk, new jersey 2x platinum and keep the faith 1x platinum. it does seem their singles game was strong over there though

― da croupier, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:09 (14 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they probably got a lot more airplay with keep the faith but those 2 albums were huge at school but keep the faith kept them in the big league here with huge singles.

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:12 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally endorse the brits starting an "EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW" thread

― da croupier, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:13 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a band like def leppard certainly lost momentum here Hysteria sold a lot and lets get rocked was a huge hit and I think Adrenalize sold OK but pretty sure that meets the croteria for this thread in the UK. no idea how it sold in the usa

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:15 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

adrenalize is on the poll thread we did

BEST/MOST "BON JOVI'S NEW JERSEY" ALBUM EVER

― da croupier, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:16 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heard "let's get rocked" on a 90s flashback station a few months ago and maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan

― da croupier, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:17 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the video i think promoted that song. I remember it on the chart show and totps (as well as a live performance)

I can think of one HUGE hit album wonders in the UK like Lighthouse Family or David Gray but not a Be Here Now type album. Think that might be out on its own.

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:22 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To be a New Jersey:
- follow-up to a huge, (possibly) defining record
- has less and/or smaller hits than prev album - or - hits based more on momentum than appeal
- brings with it the feeling that the NEXT record (if there is one) will see the bottom fall out (relatively speaking)

with the multi-platinum bar added to keep solipsistic indie fucks from talking about whichever pavement or death cab album all their friends bought but now no one talks about, and those feelings about then next dropping replaced with the knowledge so prognosticators have to sit on their hands

― da croupier, Sunday, 11 January 2015

i cant even remember the name of the follow up to simply reds 'stars' so it might qualify haha

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:23 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A lot of legit New Jerseys seem to have one big memorable hit equatable to the biggest of the previous album and several more hits that are lost to time - Bad Medicine, Whats The Frequency Kenneth, Lets Get Rocked

― Master of Treacle, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:41 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Simply Red's follow up to Stars qualifies imo - 'Fairground' and some other stuff

― Master of Treacle, Sunday, 11 January 2015 02:51 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how about m people?

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 11 January 2015 03:08 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

elegant slumming was huge the next album had a big hit single and sold well initially but does anyone even remember it now? and the album after had a song used on a tv ad but thats about it

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 11 January 2015 03:11 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

manic street preachers - this is my truth tell me yours

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 11 January 2015 03:12 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

soon to be seen on no way sna

So along with
Def Leppard - Adrenalize
Simply Red - Life
M People - Northern Soul
Manic Street Preachers - This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours

how about Paul Weller - Heavy Soul?

Dire Straits - On Every Street (I had to look up the name of it but there was a huge fuss at the time as it was the long awaited follow up to Brothers In Arms and it did sell 3million in the UK and 10m worldwide.)
It was their last album though .

Da Croupier how big was Brothers In Arms in the us? Would they fit on that thread too?

Brothers in Arms was huge like Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Prince etc

This Is My Truth went triple platinum, gave the Manics their first number one, mad them much bigger internationally than Everything Must Go, set them up to headline Glastonbury and the Millennium Stadium, and contains two of their most well-known hits.

sadly it sucks mostly

maybe it was just me who felt it was the beginning of the end (tho i did like the album after)

Brothers in Arms certified nine times platinum, which means it has shipped nine million copies in the United States.

wow i had no idea they sold so many over there.
I assume Simply Red weren't a big deal in the states?

Try Wiki.

Simply Red scored two #1 singles in the States and two albums that did OK sales riding on their heels. I know Stars was massive in England, but here "Something Got Me Started" scraped into the top forty (it was a substantial club hit though, especially when remixed).

I do remember a dance remix now you mention it but i dont think that was the one played on daytime radio i must have heard it on pete tongs show

Brothers in arms was huge in the us but on every street wasn't huge enough to be a New Jersey

Stateside On Every Street would be a Fairweather Johnson

M People - Northern Soul

You mean Bizarre Fruit, right?

This Is My Truth went triple platinum, gave the Manics their first number one, mad them much bigger internationally than Everything Must Go, set them up to headline Glastonbury and the Millennium Stadium, and contains two of their most well-known hits.

― Minaj moron (Re-Make/Re-Model), Sunday, January 11, 2015 7:00 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I think you get tweaks to this phenom like when a band is still on an upward trajectory in terms of popular impact but have already crested in terms of quality/importance: I'm sure there a lot of people for whom This Is My Truth... was their first MSP record but when they worked backwards they discovered that it was actually their worst album to date by some distance (though OTOH people who like "If You Tolerate This..." may only really have liked Everything Must Go of the past material in any event).

In this sense This Is My Truth... is as much as a What's The Story Morning Glory as it is a Be Here Now (though it fits neither camp cleanly).

tim maybe. I forget the names . I know you are more likely to be right though.

xps

tim tbh I dont think there is any album that fits a new jersey - slippery when wet exactly anyway

I honestly, genuinely thought the game was up for the Manics around the time of This Is My Truth..., even though the album was successful and 'If You Tolerate This...' went to #1, and the two albums after it (Know Your Enemy and especially Lifeblood) did nothing to convince me that they weren't sliding further still.

That they managed to somehow claw things back a little with Send Away The Tigers and Journal For Plague Lovers was amazing to me, but then they put out Postcards From A Young Man that wasn't the massive commercial smash they hoped it would be, and they've drifted back into being a cult band but with a large following.

I do get bored of the "Richey obsessive" angle of Manic Street Preachers fandom, though, and the relentless worship of The Holy Bible as if its the only worthwhile thing the band has ever done, which is nonsense.

Life by Simply Red definitely applies here. 'Fairground' and 'Remembering The First Time' were the two big hits off the album if I recall, and I guess plenty of people were waiting for it on the back of Stars (I wouldn't know, I certainly wasn't one of them), but it came out in the year that Oasis got ridiculously massive in the UK, and Parklife had already happened in the interim, leaving Mick Hucknall looking a bit old hat really. You gotta remember that at the time whenever Noel Gallagher opened his mouth to criticise or praise something in '95-'96, a lot of people actually hung on to every single one of his coke-tinged words, not having reached that point (like now) where he whines about the state of music and people are like "oh give it a rest, you backwards-looking rockist fuck". Noel could big himself up and get away with it at that time, whereas Mick Hucknall used to do the same thing and people thought he was a deluded, arrogant, womanising prick.

'We're In This Together', the "official" England song for Euro '96 was a track on Life, but was anyone singing it? Were they fuck. They were singing 'Three Lions' instead.

I can certainly think of a few britpop era bands that sorta fit the bill (OCS) but i wanted to avoid making yet another britpop thread lol

Im hoping marcello or someone will give us older examples

Elvis Costello - Spike

the Manics don't fit this sort of treatment, creatively speaking. Their last few records are at least interesting and frequently great, though yes at this point they are a diehards-only proposition commercially

I think This Is My Truth is the correct album for this thread, I actually can't think of a better example. It was obvious from Know Your Enemy's release that was already in motion.

*the slide

haha we're gonna be arguing over the manics for the rest of this thread arent we?

It is so completely their Be Here Now, it sold tonnes but no one was truly satisfied with it. Know Your Enemy was their 'Shoulder', when they were now something of a bit of a joke.

I liked KYE though

The 2nd Cast album I suppose fits too on that it sold loads and had big singles but...

but again there must be non britpop-era examples like dire straits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_the_United_Kingdom

I can certainly think of a few britpop era bands that sorta fit the bill (OCS) but i wanted to avoid making yet another britpop thread lol

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, January 11, 2015 11:06 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree, it would be way too easy to list a whole bunch of Britpop albums. Way too easy.

but im sure Dido must fit the bill all the same

(she has 2 of the biggest selling albums ever in the uk)

Oh shit, that list had just reminded me that The Corrs used to be a thing.

Talk On Corners I remember was quite big here and yielded several hit singles, but the follow-up In Blue was probably their Be Here Now. I'm looking at the tracklisting for it now and the only hit I recall on it is the lead single, 'Breathless'.

Also, maybe The Hush by Texas.

Scissor Sisters' Ta-Dah? Sold loads initially and spawned one giant single and then ran out of steam very quickly

if you compare
looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_the_United_Kingdom

with

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_the_United_States

you really notice how much more gigantic Led Zep were in the US than the UK (not to mention ac/dc and most rawk bands)

I bet any americans looking at it will be stunned at the lack of led zep in the list

Also how on earth are so many 90s albums in the list?

Look at the US sales figures for Pearl Jam's Ten compared to the UK sales figures.

I think the Psychedelic Furs album that followed Talk Talk Talk was sort of an event to anyone who loved Talk Talk Talk--which I did, more than I'd care to admit today. "Love My Way" was their first American hit. I talked-talked-talked myself into liking the album for a few weeks, quickly moved on. (And was surprised when they were even bigger when the John Hughes film came out.)

Turrican - VS outsold In Utero here though

I think the Psychedelic Furs album that followed Talk Talk Talk was sort of an event to anyone who loved Talk Talk Talk--which I did, more than I'd care to admit today. "Love My Way" was their first American hit. I talked-talked-talked myself into liking the album for a few weeks, quickly moved on. (And was surprised when they were even bigger when the John Hughes film came out.

I still love it -- played it New Year's Eve, actually. Just a notch below TTT.

Also how on earth are so many 90s albums in the list?

― Cosmic Slop

CDs, the collapse of the single, the economy, more accurate calculations of sales/shipments.

It came out September 25, 1982; I think Halloween of that year may have been the last major holiday the Psychedelic Furs and I spent together.

but the single sales ROSE in the UK then. the few years of the britpop era were the best singles sales in the past 20 odd years apparently

Jeff Wayne went 5x Platinum in the UK? Never heard of him....

Turrican - VS outsold In Utero here though

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, January 11, 2015 11:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It did!?

If "here" means America, yes.

UK too, i had a mate who worked in our price and he showed me the official industry stats.
Possible in the last 20 years it's sold more now of course.

but the single sales ROSE in the UK then. the few years of the britpop era were the best singles sales in the past 20 odd years apparently

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, January 11, 2015 11:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The fact that almost everyone was releasing 2CD versions of their singles no doubt helped!

Placebo's 'Without You I'm Nothing'?

All nu-metal and plastic-pop, until The Strokes came and saved the day. Even though I don't really like The Strokes anymore, hard to get beyond that thinking.

wait so you still buy this PR?

I tend to think that if I didn't like music one given year that it's my fault for pursuing certain sounds and genres past diminishing returns; it's a signal to try something else, not a sign of general decline (of which there's no such thing).

this thread really is a repository for some of the worst and most senile opinions to marinate in misremembered nostalgia

yeah I'm a bit appalled by what I've read in excerpts

uk-hours ilx is p much just 90s reminiscences at this point, i barely come on til the americans have woken up

All nu-metal and plastic-pop, until The Strokes came and saved the day. Even though I don't really like The Strokes anymore, hard to get beyond that thinking.

wait so you still buy this PR?

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), 14. januar 2015 15:52 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2001 is the year I turned 15. We're talking the difference between buying PR and not knowing PR existed. I KNOW that it isn't true, but everything before Strokes - or Kid A, or stuff like that - still feel alien and old.

Alfred, I do agree here - you make what you will of what there is - but in most cases, I've found myself generally repulsed or disappointed by the overall arena - not just what I'm listening to privately, but what I hear when I get out and about or look at critical / fan favourites of the time.
In the case of '98-00 I was young enough to figure I just wasn't the kind of person who liked what other people liked, and retreated into older and more leftfield music, but by 2001 I found my interest in the mainstream revived by stuff like electroclash and certain other strains of music which weren't really big features on the landscape a couple of years beforehand.
Same with 2014 - my mission to find great new music hasn't subsided - if anything it's only increased - but I'm not as inspired by critical or popular consensus as I was just 12 months ago. And yeah, that could just be me, or it could also be down to trends, opinion, where the money is going in the industry, who and what is being touted, technological factors, socio-political factors, what came before, what is to come...

Like, you're discussing Fat of the Land, and that's archaic, that's soooo old. I used to laugh at kids who listened to Prodigy, when all that electroclash and dancepunk happened. And there's a five year difference. I still love music from five years ago now, but back then, it was the difference between mattering and being worthless. And having felt that for a long time, even though I know it's not true, I still know comparatively little about that period, and I still have invested less in it.

uk-hours ilx is p much just 90s reminiscences at this point, i barely come on til the americans have woken up

― lex pretend, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 3:01 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a big part of this thread is discussing exactly why this is.

also, i mean, why do you bother posting on a thread called 'EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW' if you know you're gonna hate it before clicking?

Anyway, Alfred, I am ready to accept that human lifecycles most probably swing from enthusiasm to cynicism quite naturally and that all my VERY PERSONAL examples are testament to where my headspace is at at whatever time. Still think that save for a few examples (I agree wholeheartedly with the number one single and album) that the P&J list is comparatively lacklustre.

For what it's worth, I was listening to plenty '80s music in the '90s (courtesy of my dad's record collection), but there was no way at the time that I'd admit to it.

Placebo's 'Without You I'm Nothing'?

― PaulTMA, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:51 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Black Market Music probably fits the bill more than Without You I'm Nothing, I reckon.

Is Between The Gutter and The Stars another one was was a UK New Jersey and a US Fairweather Johnson?

i never knew before today that stereophonics had FIVE number one albums on the trot. i'm not sure i could even name five stereophonics songs tbh

― Ottbot jr (NickB), Wednesday, January 14, 2015 12:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow 5? I didnt know that either. How did they get so big?

― Cosmic Slop, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 1:16 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

At first I think people were taken by the more "storytelling" aspects of Word Gets Around, but by the time Performance and Cocktails had come out a lot of Britpop's first wave had either moved on, split up, or released their worst album to date, so people were (I guess) looking for another band to latch onto. I think Stereophonics actually nicked a lot of the casual Oasis fans.

As for their post-Performance and Cocktails "success", christ knows. I'm sure 'Dakota' brought in one or two fans and added a few more years to the life of the band, but...

this was their fifth number one album - i'm sure i'd remember such an atrocious cover but i have no recollection of it at all:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41HpaP6sfrL.jpg

goes without saying but the stereophonics were the epitome of late 90s shit UK music.

Critical response
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source Rating
Metacritic 46/100[18]
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic 2.5/5 stars [19]
BBC (unfavourable}[11]
Drowned in Sound (4/10)[10]
The Guardian 2/5 stars[20]
Hot Press 1.5/5 stars[21]
The Independent 2/5 stars[22]
NME (7/10) [23]
The Observer (unfavourable)[24]
Pitchfork Media (3.4/10) [9]
The Skinny 2/5 stars[25]

Pull the Pin received generally mixed to negative reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 46, based on 12 reviews.[18] Contrasting with the negative reviews however, NME - who have been critical of the band's past albums - contributor Paul McNamee praised the album, stating it lives up as a successor album to Language. Sex. Violence. Other? and summarised it as "an unapologetic rock’n’roll record by a band who are hard to like but impossible to ignore."[23]

In the negative, Sonja D'Cruze from the BBC summarised the album as having "no real depth, imagination or anything to connect with."[11] Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian criticised the album, saying "the only things worse than Kelly Jones's aggrieved bellow and flatpack songwriting are his lyrics" and compared them to someone "performing brain surgery in boxing gloves: the patient always dies."[20]

Yeah, the thing is, not everything the Stereophonics did was awful, they'd pull out a good one to give people hope every so often. I used to cry Help me! I like the new Stereophonics single! but in retrospect, I'm not that bothered about that paperback book song anymore.

The point of this thread is really not 'reminisce about shit landfill bands pt. 245' or 'bang on about when you were feeling alienated from music'... like the 'Be Here Now'/'New Jersey' thing really should not be this difficult to grasp.

Still not sure why the original New Jersey thread needed a British spin-off though.

ah, remember when "Wake up boo" got played as much as "Bang bang into the room" does now?

― Mark G, Wednesday, 14 January 2015 14:13 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was true, but I was not reallly being nostalgic, yeah?

This thread is dreadful.

Still not sure why the original New Jersey thread needed a British spin-off though.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 4:11 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For derails?

this was their fifth number one album - i'm sure i'd remember such an atrocious cover but i have no recollection of it at all

I remember the sleeve, but I couldn't tell you what's on it!

that album cover screams 'terrible flop'

Not familiar with Bon Jovi's back catalogue, but I'd understood 'New Jersey' to mean 'The big hyped album that sold really well but which you could tell just by listening to it that it was the beginning of the end'. Still kind of unclear how this applies to Be Here Now and not Fat Of The Land, but I don't want to harp on about it any more.

because da croupier made a suggestion that he would like to see one and i ran with it matt dc

Fatboy Slim with Palookaville? Or was it the album before?

thread is dead but: I only ever lived in the UK for a couple of years, but got the impression that the album as thing was just always significantly less important to Brit musical culture in general--like, in the US, you have AOR; in the UK, whenever I looked at the album charts some complication "Now That's Wot I Call Meat & Two Veg!" was always at #1......it just seemed like it was more of a pop culture, and therefore more about singles than LPs. Am I completely off base?

for "complication", read "compilation"

Radio has always bee singles chart orientated.
In the 80s, because of compilation albums topping the album charts , they gave them their own compilations chart and were, quite rightly, ineligible for the album chart.

Wonder if there's a Queen album that fits? Turrican?

Hot Space.

obv.

Yeah, I'd say Hot Space too.

was it an event album that sold shitloads at the time?

The opposite of that.

Then it doesn't fit.

Queen recovered just fine after Hot Space anyway. Except for in the US, where the damage was done during The Works campaign

What about James' 'Millionaires'? I have no idea how well it sold, but it came out on the back of their hugely successful greatest hits and was supposed to be the album that propelled them to superstardom, or something. I actually don't think I've heard a note of it, though it seems like it was ultimately the beginning of the end for them.

'albums that came after a greatest hits' is a whole weird make/break kettle of fish though, right?

yeah , tho the huge selling beautiful south greatest hits surprised everybody

I've been wondering what Simple Minds album would fit this. I'd say Street Fighting Years - seemed to be them at their height in the UK, but the exact point where they became despicable in the eyes of everyone who didn't buy it. The album is so overblown and borderline worthless as well.

that's probably the correct choice but 'once upon a time' was definitely a major dry heave before they coughed their guts up

Street Fighting Years is a good one.

yeah on the back of their only UK #1 Belfast Child wasn't it? Definitely a big anticipated album by everyone my age bar me at my school.

It's like a really sanctimonious proto-Be Here Now - the three times I forced myself to listen to it, I was reminded of This Is My Truth as well. No fun.

You never see pro-Street Fighting Years pieces, eh?

http://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2015/07/simple-minds-street-fighting-years.html

heh it seems i ask that question a lot about bon jovi