I know this topic has been beaten to death and I thought I had the perfect answer in my back pocket with American Pillar arborvitae but as I scrolled the long thread about AP here, I realized the advert pictures and the reality for many people were quite different. They do seem to grow quickly but they looked far from lush and dense.
I have this area I recently fenced in (still need gates I know) and although it’s pretty solid with the pickets I’d like to not only add height with trees but add a more solid sense of privacy with a few feet wide tree of some sort. Frankly, even deciduous columnar trees if they have a low canopy (and can be found cheaply which feels like a big if) could maybe work. But I’ve become interested again in Emerald greens because of their dark green lushness. I did have a few die of bag worms some years ago so that problem lingers in my mind along with their reported slow as molasses growth rate. But I YouTubed a time lapse for them and found those two pictures and was relatively impressed. Are they drought tolerant, periods of drought seem more frequent lately in NJ? Big plus is I can pick them up for $15 at Home Depot. American pillar I believe I can order for around the same. I think I’d prefer a height closer to American pillar but again the concern over the thickness. Junipers seem slow growing but I believe all junipers are drought tolerant right and a blue wall could be cool. I don’t see them often as a screen like this, maybe for good reason? Another idea I had was clumping bamboo, definitely different.

For reference this plot is about 27 feet wide and 80 feet long and that’s why I’m trying to keep the screen narrow but it’s complicated because for 30-40 feet of that length I may remove the fence separating it from my pool area thus making the area less of a narrowish defined rectangle. I’ll post a picture to better illustrate this in comments. Anyway point is maybe I could go up to 8 feet wide for a tree idk.

This became long-winded thank you to anyone who reads it and even more thanks to anyone with a suggestion.