"sophomore CD" etc. (Was Re: sidebar to recent discussion of southmore)

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 10:05 PM 5/24/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Have Listmembers encountered the fairly recent usage of "sophomore" to mean:
>the second of a sequence
>(analogous to "freshman" meaning the first, the initial one -- as in "your
>freshman --followed by your sophomore-- year in college)?
>
>I've collected these examples
>:
>Mike Nichols's sophomore film -- Villag Voice 2/18/97
>Unfortunately, on their sophomore CD -- TIME 6/9/97
>Maybe it's a case of sophomore slump -- NYTimes BookRev 1/11/98
>his sophomore album's most memorable moments -- Village Voice 4/14/98
>routed any fear of a sophomore jinx -- Vanity Fair March 99
>one sure thing: the sophomore jinx -- TIME 8/16/99
>

I've heard "sophomore record/CD" back as long ago as the 1980's, but I can't
give you *written* refs.

It's long-standing lore in the popular-music industry that many groups that
can write one good album can't do a second, because it took them years to
get one album of material together and they are unable to get an album worth
of comparable material together in the year or so that a hot new group has
before people start forgetting about them if they don't release something
else. The problem is exacerbated when the success of a first album leads to
a heavy toruing schedule and consequent lack of compositional time.

My off-the-cuff guess would be that the idea originated in the popular-music
industry (where some of your quotes are from, incidentally) and spread from
there to movies and books and the like.



Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at is2.nyu.edu