Hit Parade: The Great War Against the Single Edition

Summary

Hit Parade: The Great War Against the Single Edition

Podcast: Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Host: Chris Molanphy
Date: September 29, 2017
Episode Theme:
This episode unpacks the music industry’s decades-long “war against the single”—a deliberate strategy by record labels in the 1990s to phase out retail singles in favor of more profitable album sales, and how that ultimately backfired. Chris Molanphy explores a half-century of singles versus albums, using MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This,” alongside many other iconic hits, to illustrate how economics, policy, and technology shaped the pop charts, consumer habits, and the fate of music as a product.

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Main Topics and Insights

1. MC Hammer’s Curious Chart Story & The Changing Meaning of “Single”

• Opening Context:

  • MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” (1990), despite being everywhere, peaked at only No. 8 on the Hot 100. It didn’t top the chart—or even reach the Top 5—because of how it was released.
  • “[‘U Can’t Touch This’] was schlocky, conceited, and undeniable. Peaking on the charts in June, it was regarded by many as the song of the summer. Except you wouldn't necessarily have guessed that by looking at Billboard's Hot 100 at the time.” (Chris Molanphy, 03:00)

• Key Note:

  • The song’s underperformance was intentional—Capitol Records only released it as a 12” vinyl, making it chart-eligible but nearly impossible to buy as a mainstream single.
  • "Releasing a major radio hit only on vinyl 12-inch single in 1990 was tantamount to not issuing it as a single at all." (09:20)

• What Is a Single?

  • The definition shifted over decades—a “single” wasn’t just a song promoted to radio, but specifically a song sold on its own (retail single). The industry’s late-80s and 90s maneuvering created the “radio hit”/“retail single” divide.

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2. Chart History: From Singles to Albums and Back Again

1960s–1970s: The Album Ascendant

• Singular Focus:
  • In early rock, 45s (singles) dominated. “[In] 1960, singles were outselling albums... by roughly a 2 to 1 ratio.” (13:00)
• Beatles & The Rise of the Album:
  • The Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” (1965) and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967) marked a cultural shift toward albums as “artistic statements.”
  • “Rubber Soul was the first major pop album to have no contemporaneous singles pulled from it in either the US or the UK.” (13:40)
  • “Sgt. Pepper... helped make the album, not the single, the standard unit of measure for popular music.” (16:00)

1970s–1980s: The Blockbuster Album Model

• Exponential Single Releases:

  • Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” Bee Gees' “Saturday Night Fever,” and most notably Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” redefined the album as a machine generating numerous hit singles.
  • “Thriller... generated a still unbeaten seven top-10 hits on an album containing only nine songs. More than three-fourths of the tracks were released as singles and all of them were smash hits.” (25:00)

• But, Singles Still Sold:

  • Until the 1990s, every chart-dominant album spawned retail singles—even as albums became cultural events.

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3. The ‘War’ Begins: The 1990s and the Attack on the Single

The MC Hammer & Vanilla Ice Experiments (1990)

• Capitol/EMI's Tactics:
  • With Hammer, the label limited single availability, fueling massive album sales (Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em spent 21 weeks at No. 1 and sold 10 million copies within a year).
  • “[T]he overwhelming majority of consumers desiring the song would wind up buying Hammer's album on cassette or CD.” (30:00)
• Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby":
  • Initially available as a single, pulled once it reached No. 1, driving “To the Extreme” to 4 million sales.

The Ripple Effect: Grunge and Alternative (1991–1994)

• No Singles Policy for Credibility (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, et al):
  • Labels withheld singles for credibility and to drive album sales, especially with “album-oriented” acts like Pearl Jam (whose “Ten” outlasted Nirvana’s “Nevermind” on the charts).

Mainstream Pop and Airplay Blockbusters (Mid-Late ‘90s)

• Withholding Singles for Massive Hits:
  • Pop/rock smashes like The Rembrandts' “I’ll Be There For You” (Friends theme), Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly,” and No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” were all unavailable as retail singles at their radio peak.
  • “If I'll Be There for You had been issued as a single, it would have been number one on the Hot 100 for the better part of two months. Because it wasn't out as a single at the song's radio peak, it didn't appear on the chart at all that summer.” (43:00)

The “One Good Song” Era (Late 1990s)

• Forcing Album Sales on One-Hit Wonders:
  • Labels extended the singles ban to novelty and one-off hits (e.g., Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn”), making consumers buy entire albums for one desired song.
  • “Ask anyone... about this period and they'll grumble about paying $16 to acquire one good song.” (54:00)

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4. Chart & Industry Fallout

• The Hot 100 Skew:
  • Billboard’s chart rules meant that massive radio hits often didn’t appear on the Hot 100, confusing fans and distorting history. (“Don’t Speak” [No Doubt] spent 16 weeks as the most played US song but never appeared on the Hot 100.)(55:20)
• Retail Pushback:
  • Retailers complained teens and tweens couldn't buy music affordably, hurting future consumer growth.
• Rule Change (1998):
  • Billboard finally allowed airplay-only songs onto the Hot 100, but much damage was already done—historical chart records were permanently altered.

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5. The Industry’s Hubris—and Its Comeuppance

• Napster and Digital Rebellion:
  • Napster’s 1999 rise wasn’t just about piracy; it was a “rebellion... against the erratic quality and high prices of CDs in the 90s, but to the very idea that the album is the fundamental core of music.” (69:48)
• iTunes Restores the Single:
  • The launch of iTunes in 2003, and Steve Jobs’ insistence that every track cost 99 cents, revived the single as music’s fundamental economic unit.
  • “[S]teve Jobs upended four decades of music industry gospel—and he revived the singles market. Now, in essence, there was no such thing as the album cut; all songs were singles.” (73:36)

Key Quote (Finale):

• “No, albums are great, but the song is the fundamental unit of music, as it has been for centuries. It's as if the recording industry misread human nature back in the '60s and couldn't admit it made a mistake.” (70:18)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “What if you could get a blockbuster album with fewer hit songs? What if you didn't have to put those hit singles out at retail at all?” (29:00)
• “Enter the late 1990s... I call this the ‘one good song’ period. Ask anyone... about this period and they'll grumble about paying $16 to acquire one good song.” (54:00)
• “When you look at recent pop music history from the perspective of the single... the rise of Napster and file sharing in 1999 doesn't simply read as people wanting free stuff... Rather, to me as a singles fan, it reads as a true rebellion...” (69:50)
• “For the first time in history, you could buy ‘Stairway to Heaven’ for the price of a cup of coffee.” (75:00)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Introduction to the War on the Single & MC Hammer (00:00–09:00)
• What Is a “Single”? Historical Perspective & Beatles (10:00–16:00)
• Album as Artistic Statement, Sgt. Pepper, and 70s/80s Blockbusters (16:30–27:00)
• The Hammer/Vanilla Ice Announcement and 1990s Shift (28:00–35:00)
• Grunge and Singles Suppression (35:00–40:00)
• Radio Hits Missing from the Chart (The Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette) (41:57–46:20)
• More Iconic Singles Kept Off the Charts (Fugees, Tupac, No Doubt) (47:29–55:00)
• One-Hit Wonder Album Push (Chumbawamba, Aqua, etc.) (54:00–64:00)
• Billboard’s “White Flag”: Chart Rule Changes (64:00–66:30)
• Napster, iTunes, and Digital Disruption (69:48–75:30)

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Summary & Takeaway

Chris Molanphy’s deep-dive reveals how major labels spent the 1990s manipulating what counted as a single to bolster album sales—sometimes propelling albums by both superstars and one-hit wonders to multi-platinum status. However, this strategy backfired spectacularly with the rise of Napster and digital music, as consumers rebelled against overpriced, padded CDs and demanded singles. The episode closes with a reflection on how streaming and digital sales have returned power to music fans, reestablishing the “song”—not the album—as the central unit of pop culture.

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For more episodes and pop chart history, subscribe to Hit Parade.

Transcript

[Chris Molanphy]

You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate and panoply about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One Series. We're back from our late summer hiatus with an extra long episode and for the first time Hit Parade finally has its own feed, thanks to the many of you who asked us for a way to subscribe to directly to our humble podcast. It's now available both on the Slate Culture Gabfest feed, where it has been from the start and on our new Hit Parade feed. Please do subscribe on your podcast app of choice. Tell your friends and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. And now as the late Casey Kasem used to say, on with the countdown. On today's show the history of hip hop dates to the 1970s, and rap began to emerge as a recorded medium at the turn of the 1980s. But it took another decade for hip hop to generate its first diamond level pop blockbuster. It happened in 1990 with this absurdly catchy recording, you Can't Touch this.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

You Can't Touch this.

[Chris Molanphy]

That obviously is yous Can't Touch this, the first ever pop crossover hit for Oakland, California rapper MC Hammer, underpinned by a very prominent sample of the 1981 Rick James RB hit Super Freak. You Can't Touch this entered the jock jam and party starter pantheon virtually the instant it arrived in the spring of 1990. It was schlocky, conceited and undeniable. Peaking on the charts in June, it was regarded by many as the song of the summer. Except you wouldn't necessarily have guessed that by looking at Billboard's Hot 100 at the time. We've led off every episode of Hit Parade thus far with a number one song from Red Red Wine to Can't Buy Me Love to We Are the World. But you Can't Touch this not only didn't top the chart, it didn't even make the Top five. This seems strange. Love it or hate it, you Can't Touch this was ubiquitous in 1990, more pervasive than some actual number one hits from that summer. What accounts for Hammer's chart underperformance was it a lack of radio acceptance of rap at the turn of the 90s? Greater tolerance of white bread pop acts of the day like Wilson Phillips? Believe it or not, the single underperformed because Hammer's record label wanted it that way. It had to do with the way the song was released, a pivotal decision by Capitol Records that influenced the entire recording industry. You Can't Touch this kicked off a decade long experiment, an attempt to change the economics of the business from the ground up. By the mid-90s, dozens of hot songs were underperforming on the Hot 100 hits, as well known as this one. Or this one, Or even this. None of these massive songs reached number one. In fact, when each of them was peaking on the radio, playing everywhere you went, none of them was even on the Hot 100 at all. This confused chart followers and skewed the historical record. Today on Hit Parade, we'll talk about how this came to pass, how the recording industry declared war on the single in the 1990s in an effort to get you to pay more for the songs you loved, compelling album purchases even for one hit wonders, and how that effort ultimately backfired by decade's end. And it all kicked off with an energetic, boastful, fun loving single by a guy who started as an Oakland A's bat boy before trying his hand at rap and making baggy pants famous. And that's where your hit parade marches today. The week ending June 16, 1990, when you Can't Touch this by MC Hammer reached its peak on the Hot 100 of no. 8. The week it reached that apex, the actual number one song in America was this one.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

But it's over now. It was all that I wanted, Now I'm living without.

[Chris Molanphy]

It Must have Been Love by the Swedish duo Roxette was legitimately an enormous hit in the spring and summer of 1990, it had appeared on the soundtrack to the blockbuster movie Pretty Woman, the film that institutionalized Julia Roberts as America's sweetheart. And it was the Swedish act's third number one single in just over a year, following up their 1989 smashes the look and listen to your Heart. So there was nothing unfair or unusual about Roxette sitting on top of the Hot 100 again. But if you looked closely at that chart, a key bit of fine print was under Rockset's name, a letter in parentheses. That helped explain why it must have been Love was able to reach number one in the first place. The letter C that Billboard footnote was an abbreviation for cassette single or casingal. At this juncture, I want to offer a bit of music industry nomenclature. What is a single? This is a surprisingly malleable word, especially for those who grew up and started consuming music at different points over the last half century. In industry parlance, a single is generally understood to mean a song promoted to radio stations, video channels, clubs and the public as an emphasis track and a potential hit. However, especially in the pre digital era before itunes and Spotify and particularly in Billboard magazine, a single was generally understood to mean a retail single, a song you could buy on its own in a store without having to buy a whole album. In this episode I will distinguish between so called radio hits, songs that were promoted to radio and sought airplay but weren't made available in stores, and retail singles which you could buy a la carte in the 21st century where you can buy or stream virtually any track. Single means simply song that is promoted to radio and bound for the charts. But when I say the industry declared war on the single in the 1990s, I mean the retail single. Anyway, back to mid June 1990. On that week's chart all seven songs sitting above youe Can't Touch this were marked with the little C in parentheses. All were available as K singles. A few of these hits also had a small CD under their names indicating availability on the slightly more expensive but usually $5 or less CD single format. For example, the former number one Vogue by Madonna, now at number five was available on both Casingle and CD Sing. In fact, on that week's chart, 39 of the top 40 songs were available on cassette single or CD single, whether it was an R and B hip hop act like Bel Biv DeVoe, An alternative rock act like Depeche Mode.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

In My Arms.

[Chris Molanphy]

Or a torch balladeer like the then new vocalist Mariah Carey. The one exception, the only summer 1990 top 40 hit with no C or CD annotation on the chart was you Can't Touch this. Beneath MC Hammer's name on the chart, Billboard showed only the letter T in parentheses that stood for 12 inch as in the 12 inch vinyl format. Since the 1970s at the height of disco, record labels had made extended mixes of dance oriented songs available on vinyl singles the size of LPs, primarily for club disc jockeys. In many cases these extended 12 inch dance mixes became legendary. Of course, folks besides DJs would buy 12 inch singles, record collectors, dance music aficionados, and huge fans of an act who wanted to own every version of that act's hit song. But by the end of the 80s vinyl was rapidly contracting as a segment of the music business, done in by cassettes in the age of the Walkman and accelerated by the record industry, which nudged the shift to more profitable compact discs by changing its return policies on vinyl and thereby disincentivizing retailers to stock it. By 1990, some labels weren't even issuing their new albums on vinyl LP at all. And 12 inch singles. They were a niche product, still utterly essential for DJs who relied on the tactile platters for seamless mixing in clubs, but not a major retail product for the mainstream consumer. Releasing a major radio hit only on vinyl 12 inch single in 1990 was tantamount to not issuing it as a single at all. The 12 inch made you can't touch this eligible for the Hot 100, but far less likely for consumers, especially teenagers, to buy it. Why would a major label, in this case LA's Capitol Records, neglect to put out one of the biggest, catchiest songs of the year on the most popular singles formats? Before we answer that and talk about how the Hot 100 worked in the 90s, let's jump back 25 years to the mid-60s and talk a bit about a singles versus albums experiment by these hitmakers.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

He's a real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land, making.

[Chris Molanphy]

That's Nowhereman, a track from the Beatles 1965 album Rubber Soul. At least it was if you bought Rubber Soul in the uk. Here in America, Nowhere man was a single sold on 45 RPM vinyl, and it was left off the US version of the Rubber Soul LP in 1965. Capitol Records in America later collected Nowhere man on the US only compilation Yesterday and Today in the uk, Nowhere man wasn't issued as a single at all. I mention the Beatles, Rubber Soul and Nowhere man to point out how differently the music business worked in the early rock era. In the late 50s and early 60s, the vinyl 45 was king and the retail single was a viable, vital source of profits for the recording industry. According to a 1960 Billboard article, singles were outselling albums that year by roughly a 2 to 1 ratio. Albums were afterthoughts. Record labels would title them after an act's latest hit, sometimes even changing the album's title while it was still in stores. Generally, long playing albums in the early 60s were seen as the province of adults with advanced hi fi systems. Singles were what sold in bulk, they were under a dollar, and teenagers could play them on cheap record players in their bedrooms. But this perception began to change around the time of Rubber Soul. In early 1966, Billboard reported that more teenagers were buying albums and that 1.2 million people had bought Rubber Soul in its first nine days, the kinds of numbers a label like capital used to see on singles. Again, no singles were issued from Rubber soul. The Nowhere Man 45 was issued separately in America and not at all in England. Rubber Soul was the first major pop album to have no contemporaneous singles pulled from it in either the US or the uk. The Beatles took this even further two years and two albums later.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Let me take you down Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.

[Chris Molanphy]

Recorded for the sessions that would ultimately become Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Strawberry Fields Forever was pulled from the sessions and issued as a single in February 1967. Paired with another Beatles classic on the flip side, Penny Lane, Penny Lane is.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

In my ears and in my eyes Back beneath the blue suburban sky this.

[Chris Molanphy]

Double sided single performed well on both sides of the Atlantic, topping the Hot 100 in the US and reaching number two on the UK singles chart. But the album that followed did even better. Much, much better.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Will enjoy the show sergeant Pepper's Lovely.

[Chris Molanphy]

Sergeant Pepper wasn't just the most heralded album of the rock era, it was also a smash success, spending 15 weeks atop the US album chart, the longest stay of any Beatles album in America, and 27 weeks atop the UK's chart, making it England's best selling studio album ever. And even more than Rubber Soul before it, Pepper was presented as a coherent piece. Radio stations played whole sides of the album in one go, and no singles were issued from it on either side of the Atlantic. Indeed, with Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields already excised from the album, it was easier to present the remaining album as an indivisible statement.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Woke up, fell out of bed Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a coffee Looking up I noticed I was late Found my coat and grabbed my hat Made the bus and seconds flat.

[Chris Molanphy]

Pepper inaugurated the modern era of album length, artistic statement we now take for granted today. But its importance to the recording industry can't be overstated. For the music business, Sgt. Pepper was the killer app. It helped make the album, not the single, the standard unit of measure for popular music. Once the industry saw in 1967 that long playing albums with no singles could sell better than 45s, the whole emphasis changed. Music was meant to be heard, enjoyed, judged and most important, purchased at length. Labels built their economic foundation around people's willingness to buy bundles of songs more often than they paid for individual ones. Moving into the 70s, albums became ever bigger blockbusters. Future 10 million sellers. From Tapestry to Songs in the Key of Life to Hotel California, most of these albums produced hit singles. But after Sgt. Pepper, smash albums in the 70s didn't necessarily need top 10 or even top 40 pop hits. In fact, for certain rock acts it was a mark of respectability not to put out 45s and seek top 40 airplay. Consider this stately ditty.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Feel sure all it glitters is gold and she's buying a stairway.

[Chris Molanphy]

I apologize to my listeners over 40 who are having flashbacks right now to high school slow dances and fumblings in station wagons and visits to Guitar Center. Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven is perhaps the most famous non single of all time. A song that at the height of 70s album oriented rock or AOR would receive copious airplay on FM radio. Even though you had to buy the Full Led Zeppelin 4 album to own it. By declining to issue it as a 45, Zeppelin guaranteed that the song would be ineligible for the Hot 100. Billboard's rules @ the time stated that songs had to be issued as retail singles to compete on the chart. So for AOR acts like Zeppelin, not issuing certain songs as singles was a badge of honor. Many classic rock acts in this period avoided singles for some of their most famous songs, including Jethro Tull, Pink floyd. And yes. Even some acts perceived more as pop troubadours in the 70s would selectively avoid singles for songs of theirs that were more popular on rock radio, including Billy Joel. And elton john. However, one misconception of album oriented rock in the 70s was that the dominant acts of the day stopped issuing singles entirely. All of the above rock stars would release singles every album or two. If a song was catchy enough for pop radio, it would be released as a 45. And if it made the American top 40, Casey Kasem would count it down. That included Pink Floyd, number.

[Casey Kasem]

14. Here's a four man British act. They've had some album hits and they've hit the top 100 before, but this is their very first single to make the top 40. It's titled money and it moves up three notches this week to number 14. This is pink.

[Chris Molanphy]

Floyd and yes.

[Casey Kasem]

This is Casey Kasem rolling on to a brand new number one song from England. Now moving up one from 14 to 13. This is yes, their hit.

[Chris Molanphy]

Roundabout and even the mighty Led.

[Casey Kasem]

Zeppelin. Casey Kasem. And the countdown continues with Led Zeppelin and black.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Dog. Number 15. Hey mama said the way you move gonna make you sweat Going to make you.

[Chris Molanphy]

Groo. This then was the music industry's codependent dysfunctional relationship with the pop single. By the late 70s, the business hated retail singles but needed them. They wanted you to buy more profitable LPs, but they also wanted top 40 hits that would make artists stars and make you likelier to buy the album. There was debate within the industry, should a major act release fewer singles and force an album purchase or release more and pack an album with hits? What if you could make an album so packed with hits it became irresistible? Prior to 1977, no album had ever generated more than three top 10 singles. Labels would usually stop issuing tracks from an album when it reached the third single and move on to the next album. But two blockbuster albums, both released in 1977, changed that. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Rumours was the first single artist album to produce four top 10 hits on the Hot 100, all of them issued as retail singles. Go youo Own Way, Don't Stop you, Make Loving Fun, and the number one hit, Dreams. The result was radio dominance virtually all year for Fleetwood Mac and blockbuster sales, including 31 weeks as the nation's best selling LP. Saturday Night Fever, fronted by the Bee Gees, did rumors one better. It also produced four smashes by the middle of 1978. But they weren't just top tens, they were number ones, all written by the Brothers Gibb. One hit recorded by Yvonne Element, if I Can't have youe, and three by the Bee Gees themselves. Night Fever, Staying Alive, and How Deep Is your Love, How Deep is.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Your love, how deep is your Love? Cause we're living in a world of.

[Chris Molanphy]

Clothes. The fever soundtrack spent 24 weeks on top in 1978 and for about half a decade ranked as the best selling album of all time. The music business took this multisingle model into the 80s and ran with it. They could get comfortable with letting the consumer have a flood of 45s, so long as they all came from one hit spangled album. Sooner or later, the consumer would succumb. The most obvious beneficiary of this strategy was Michael Jackson, who in 1980 tied Fleetwood Mac's single artist record with four top 10s from his 1979 album off the Wall. Three years later, Michael obliterated his own record with Thriller. The album that eclipsed the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in sales, is still the top selling album of all time and generated a still unbeaten seven top 10 hits on an album containing only nine songs. More than three fourths of the tracks were released as singles and all of them were smash hits. For the rest of the 1980s, the major record labels pursued what could be called the Thriller model, emphasizing albums that could be milked dry for hits. This was the era of the mega blockbuster, when it was not unheard of to go six or seven singles deep on an album and be rewarded for it. Between 1984 and 1990, more than a dozen chart topping albums generated at least five top 40 singles, at least four of which were top 10 hits, a success ratio that would have been considered remarkable just a decade earlier. If you were a pop fan in the 1980s, just the titles of these albums will sound familiar to you. From Princess Purple Rain to Bryan Adams Reckless to Madonna's True Blue to Whitney Houston's Whitney to George Michael's Faith to Paula Abdul's Forever your Girl, a handful of albums made it as far as six or even seven hit singles. For example, less than two years after Jackson's Thriller, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA repeated its feat by spawning seven top 10 singles, from Dancing in the Dark to to I'm on Fire to Glory.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Days, Glory.

[Chris Molanphy]

Days. Or what about Michael's sister Janet Jackson, who topped the charts with back to back albums spawning at least a half dozen hits each, including 1986's Control album. And 1989's Rhythm Nation, whose seven singles all went top five. Or take the hair metal band Def Leppard, they spent nearly two years issuing singles from 1987's Hysteria. Remember, in the 70s, some hard rock acts avoided releasing pop singles altogether. But Leopard's album spawned seven, six of which made the top 20 and four even made the top 10. Even Michael Jackson himself managed to virtually repeat his Thriller success ratio with his follow up. Jackson's 1987 album Bad generated seven singles, and while only six were top 10 hits, five of them went all the way to number one. Another record that still stands.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Today. Take a look at yourself, Then make a.

[Chris Molanphy]

Change. Keep in mind, each of these 80s albums, most of which sold best on cassette at the peak of the Walkman, not only spawned a half dozen singles apiece, they topped the album chart and went platinum many times over. And yet in each case, the hit songs spawned by these albums were also available as retail singles, available for purchase at record stores either on 45 or a casingal. As we headed into the 90s, the recording industry seemed to have a formula that worked for minting make as many songs on the album as possible into pop hits. But hit songs are hard work. Labels spend big money promoting each one to radio and at retail, they're not as profitable as albums. What if you could get a blockbuster album with fewer hit songs? What if you didn't have to put those hit singles out at retail at all? Which brings us back to 1990 and Capitol Records experiment with MC Hammer. As I noted at the top of the show, by issuing you Can't Touch this only on the niche 12 inch vinyl format, the song did qualify for the Hot 100. It could ride the chart that told America a song was a hit, but it guaranteed that the overwhelming majority of consumers desiring the song would wind up buying Hammer's album on cassette or cd. That album was titled Please Hammer, Don't Hurt Em and while youe Can't Touch this, thanks to its retail handicap, couldn't get any higher on the Hot 100 than no. 8. Hammer's album was a chart monster. It not only reached no. 1 on the Billboard album chart, it stayed there for 21 weeks nearly half the year. Some statistics, that's 21 weeks on top for an album with no. 1 hits on it and few hits period. Capitol did issue four singles from Please Hammer, Don't Hurt Em, but only three were top 40 hits, including have youe Seen her and.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Prey. We Got to pray just to make it today I said we pray oh yeah, we pray we got to pray just to make it.

[Chris Molanphy]

Today Virtually all of the blockbuster 80s albums I just mentioned had far more hits. All but one, Springsteen's Born in the USA had a number one hit. And remember, Springsteen's album spawned a whopping seven top 10s. Hammer's 21 weeks atop the album chart was longer than any album since Prince's Purple Reign. And it was longer than any 80s album except Purple Rain and Thriller. And did I mention Hammer's sales? By April 1991, barely one year after its release, Please Hammer, Don't Hurt him had been certified 10 times platinum, an award the industry would later call diamond that was the fastest any album had been certified at the 10 million sales level since multi platinum awards were invented in 1984. It was faster than Born in the USA, Purple Rain and Hysteria reached that milestone. And Hammer's sales in that one year were higher than sales of any album by Madonna or Whitney Houston or Janet Jackson to that point. And one more thing, remember that rap in general was still a fairly new genre and it had never seen this kind of success on the album chart. Only two rap albums period had topped the pop album chart prior to 1990. The Beastie Boys 1986 album license.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

To Ill, you Gotta Fight for your Right to.

[Chris Molanphy]

Party and Tone Loke short lived hit Loaked After Dark. Please Hammer Don't Hurt him was the first hip hop album of any kind to see this level of success to this day it remains one of the best selling albums in rap history. Yes, even now after Tupac and Biggie and Jay Z and Kanye and Drake. Among rap albums, it remains the third best selling single disc of all time behind only a pair of Eminem albums. Having succeeded wildly with Hammer, EMI Capital's parent company didn't even wait until the end of 1990 to try a similar album stoking experiment. Another of EMI's subsidiary labels, SBK Records, had its own sample heavy pop wrapper. All right, stop, collaborate and listen. Ice is back with my brand.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

New invention Something Grabs Ahold of Me.

[Chris Molanphy]

Tightly Flow Like a Harpoon Daily and Night. That's Miami based rapper and Queen and David Bowie fan Vanilla Ice with his smash 1990 hit Ice Ice Baby. Unlike youe Can't Touch this, Ice Ice Baby was released in the popular Kasingle format and it charged up the Hot 100. But once SBK Ice's EMI distributed label knew the song was poised to top the chart, the baby single was pulled from stores. The result? The song spent only one week at number one on the Hot 100. But on the album chart, Vanilla Ice's to the Extreme shot to number one and stayed there for 16 weeks, shipping 4 million copies out of the gate and eventually going septuple platinum. In fact, in the fall of 1990, to the extreme was the album that knocked Please Hammer Don't Hurt Em out of the number one spot. In short, EMI produced two back to back smash albums. First by withholding MC Hammer's big hit from the most popular singles medium altogether and the second time by pulling Vanilla Ice's big hit from the market just as it peaked, it poured profits into EMI's coffers. These experiments did not go unnoticed by the rest of the music industry. The one two punch of youf Can't Touch this and Ice Ice Baby kicked off a decade long campaign to bury the single as a retail medium. For the first time and decades after Sgt. Pepper, the labels were going to go all out. Not just to compel, but to force an album purchase. EMI's initial experiments were with pop leaning rap singles, but the 1990s great war against the single went through several distinct phases with many different kinds of acts across a range of genres. In fact, the contemporaneous rise of a new rock genre provided an ideal battleground for the next phase of the war. The rise of what came to be called grunge, kicked off in 1991 by Seattle, bands like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, not only revived Hard rock sounds from the 70s peak of LED Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. It also provided the record industry with a new generation of bands that could credibly be sold as album rock. Early grunge radio hits like Alice's man in the Box charted as promotional singles on the rock charts, but not on the Hot 100, not unusual for fledgling bands with a hard rock sound. By late 1991, however, grunge went prime. Time. Smells like Teen Spirit, Nirvana's shot heard around the world, was not only a hit on the album and alternative rock radio formats, it was also a massive pop hit. Lead singer Kurt Cobain was a fan of singles, and Teen Spirit was issued as a retail casingle and CD single, so it was eligible for the Hot 100, where it peaked at number six in the winter of 1992. The album it sprang from, Nirvana's Nevermind, topped the Billboard album chart in January 1992. Within a year of its release, Nevermind was triple platinum, unprecedented for a grunge rock album. But a contemporary grunge album by a rival band ultimately did even better. In their first four years together, Pearl Jam released no commercial singles in America. Treating the new band as future Zeppelins, their label, Epic Records, wanted to pump up their US album sales as much as possible. The tactic worked. Pearl Jam's album 10, which was released within a month of Nirvana's Nevermind, wound up a much longer lasting and bigger selling album. By the fall of 1993, on the eve of the release of each band's follow up album, Nevermind was quadruple platinum. But sitting near the bottom of the album chart, Pearl Jam's 10 was in the top 20 and quintuple platinum. Over the next decade and a half, Nevermind would be certified for 10 million in US sales, while 10 would reach 13 million. Pearl Jam's debut remains the best selling album of the grunge era. Pearl Jam were not alone in this period. From 1991 to 1994, every leading grunge and nouveau punk act released no singles. From Soundgarden to Stone Temple.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Pilots.

[Chris Molanphy]

We. Counting crows to smashing pumpkins, Green day to offspring. By 1993, even Nirvana was eschewing singles. The radio hits from their in utero album Heart Shaped Box and All Apologies went unreleased on Casingal. This era of singles free grunge didn't last. By the mid-90s, alt rock frontmen like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Billy Corrigan of Smashing Pumpkins realized their US fans were paying top dollar for import singles, and they insisted that their labels release their new radio hits and some catalog as singles. Older songs like Pearl Jam's Jeremy were belatedly issued to retailers, and new hits like Pearl Jam's Spin, the Black Circle and the Pumpkins 1979 were released as traditional singles and even hit the top 40. But by mid decade, the labels had moved the great war against the single away from rock bands and toward even more profitable pop acts starting in 1995. More obviously, top 40 bound acts with insanely catchy songs were withheld from the singles market. Hits as poppy as this I'll.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Be there for you when the rain starts to pour, I'll.

[Chris Molanphy]

Be. I'll Be There for your was more than a catchy, overly ingratiating earworm. It was the theme to TV's hottest new sitcom of 1994 and 95, NBC's Friends. I'll be There for your was by the Rembrandts, a pleasant Los Angeles duo who'd scored a top 20 pop hit for four years earlier called Just the Way It Is Baby. The story of how this pop rock duo wound up recording one of the most popular TV themes in history is long and convoluted enough for its own hit parade episode. It even involved a rogue radio DJ not unlike the one we talked about in our Red Red Wine episode. To make a long story short, the Rembrandts were reluctantly compelled by their record label to turn the under one minute TV theme into a full blown song. And given the duo's wish to remain perceived as an alternative rock band and not a top 40 pop act with a TV theme, they demanded that I'll Be There for your only be available as an album cut tacked onto their 1995 release LP. This gave a boost to sales of both the Rembrandts LP and the Friends soundtrack, both of which ultimately went platinum. But it was confusing for followers of the Hot 100. After all, I'll Be There for your wasn't just a radio hit, it was a smash. For eight weeks in the summer of 1995, the Rembrandt's Ditty was the most played song at US radio. This was unprecedented. None of the aforementioned grunge songs that were withheld from single release had been radio hits this big. If I'll Be There for your had been issued as a single, it would have been number one on the Hot 100 for the better part of two months. Because it wasn't out as a single at the song's radio peak, it didn't appear on the chart at all that Summer Remember, since 1958, Billboard rule stated that a song had to be a retail single to appear on the chart. Even more confusingly, in the fall of 1995 when the duo put out their follow up track, the song this House Is Not a Home, they did issue it on Kasingle and they put I'll Be There for your on the B side. This allowed the Friends theme finally and belatedly to to appear on the Hot 100. Radio wasn't playing the Rembrandts new song much at all, but the two sided hit managed to reach the Hot 100's top 20 on the strength of music buyers who wanted to own I'll Be There for your. To this day, if you look up I'll Be There for your in chart history books, it will be listed as a number 17 hit rather than the would be chart topper. It essentially was during the Same summer of 1995 that the Rembrandts were commanding the radio, but nowhere on the Hot 100. Alanis Morissette was similarly absent. Her breakthrough song, you Ought To Know reach reached number one on Billboard's Modern Rock list, a chart based solely on airplay on alternative stations, but it went missing on the Hot 100 despite near top 10 level airplay on pop stations nationwide. Withheld from single release, you Ought to Know helped power Morissette's Jagged Little Pill to the top of the album chart by the fall of 95, where it spent 12 weeks, spun off five radio hits, and eventually became one of the three best selling albums in the Soundscan era, shipping more than 16 million.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Copies. Cause I've got one hand in my pocket and the other one is flickin a.

[Chris Molanphy]

Cigarette like I'll Be There for your. You Oughta Know eventually made a belated appearance on the chart as a B side. Morissette's live version of the song from the 1996 Grammy Awards, where Jagged Little Pill won album of the Year, wound up as the flip side to her fourth radio hit, you Learn. The two sided single peaked at number six on the chart the following summer. By that point in 1996, the year old Jagged Little Pill album was 11 times platinum. So it didn't hurt Alanis's label, Maverick Records to begin issuing singles or let fans buy an old hit in a live version. Generally, the songs withheld from single release in this period were in the pop rock genre, but hip hop was not immune, especially if the song in question was very high.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Profile pain with his.

[Chris Molanphy]

Finger. Like Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, the Fugees album the Score took a few months to top the charts. The trio of Wyclef Jean Pras Michel and Lauryn Hill found themselves with a sleeper word of mouth hit in the early months of 1996, and like Alanis, their album got a boost from a huge radio hit made unavailable at retail, in their case a cover of the 70s classic Killing Me Softly with his song made famous by Roberta Flack, whose version was of course issued as a single in 1973 and topped the Hot 100 for five weeks. Lauryn Hill's achingly earnest and hip hop fueled take, simply titled Killing Me Softly was the second radio single from the Score. Withholding the smash in the making did wonders for the Fugees album sales. The Score topped the album chart in its 13th week, just as Killing Me Softly was peaking as one of the five most played tracks at US radio. And it wasn't the only hip hop standard bearer that missed the Hot 100 in the first half of.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

1996.

[Chris Molanphy]

California. California Love is widely considered the greatest hit by rapper Tupac Shakur in an all Star teaming with super producer and rapper Dr. Dre. But a little remembered fact is that for the first six months it existed, California Love was not available to purchase as a single. The song first went to radio in December 1995 and peaked on radio playlists in the late winter and early spring of 1996. During this period, the song was only available on Tupac's early 96 album All Eyes on Me, which quickly went quintuple platinum. California Love wasn't finally issued as a single until June 1996 when it was included as track two on the Tupac maxi single how do youo Want It? The so called double A side sold rapidly, fueled by sales to more casual Tupac fans who had waited half a year to buy California Love on its own. By the time the single reached number one on the Hot 100, How do youo Want it was shown as the single's A side because airplay was now stronger for the newer track and California was listed as a B side. But how do youo Want it never wound up a major airplay hit, even on urban radio. The double song package topped the chart based on artificially pent up demand for one of its sides, Tupac's greatest hit Confused, you're Not Alone. All these A side and B side machinations were hard for 90s chart followers to keep track of, but at least both you Ought to know and California Love did appear on the Hot 100. Eventually, the same can't be said for one of the biggest hits of the decade, No Doubts, Don't Speak, a heartrending torch song about Gwen Stefani's breakup with bandmate Tony Kanal, featuring a melodramatic video about how her star was beginning to outshine the band's, was the third single from no Doubt's 1995 album Tragic Kingdom. I use the word single advisedly because while the album by the ska rockers spawned multiple radio hits, only the first of these was actually issued as a retail single. Their breakthrough, Just a girl, a number 23 hit in May of 1996. When Just A Girl peaked on the Hot 100. No Doubt's album was below the top 20 on the album chart, selling steadily but slowly. So their label, Interscope, gave up issuing singles and pushed the band's next two songs to radio without a retail release, the uptempo Spiderwebs. And the album's ace in the hole, Don't Speak. By the Fall, the Tragic Kingdom album, thanks to Spiderwebs, has had managed to sneak into the top 10 and was double platinum. But that was a mere throat clearing for what Don't Speak did for no Doubt and Interscope Records during that year's holiday season. Don't Speak debuted at radio in mid October, and for the next three months, Tragic Kingdom's sales grew every week. By late December, no Doubt's album was selling a half million copies a week. Tragic Kingdom topped the Billboard album chart the week before Christmas 1996, more than a year after the album was released. Two weeks earlier, Don't Speak had risen to the top position on Billboard's airplay chart. It was now the biggest radio track in the country. How big? Don't Speak went on to spend a staggering 16 weeks as the most heard song at US radio. Again, it was never issued as a retail single, so according to Billboard rules at the time, it wasn't allowed on the Hot 100. An invisible smash Just for the record, 16 weeks is a crazy long run on top for a pop hit. No song in Hot 100 history has ever spent more than 16 weeks at no. 1. Currently, two songs Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's One Sweet Day and Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankees. Despacito featuring Justin Bieber hold the record with 16 weeks apiece on top. Rolling Stone later called Tragic Kingdom one of the 500 greatest albums of all time. But acclaim wasn't what made it a smash. A full year after it was issued in Billboard, chart analysts were clear that the album's sales went from good to stratospheric. When its catchiest song was commanding the radio and unavailable for purchase as a single, the album spent nine weeks on top and went sextuple platinum by early 1997. Two years later, Tragic Kingdom was 10 times platinum. Entering the late 1990s, the recording industry had seemingly found its golden goose. Withhold an act's most radio friendly song from retailers and you will force an album purchase. And the fact that by the mid-90s, album usually meant a 15 to $18 compact disc, up to $10 higher than the LP or cassette the industry was minting money. Up to now, the labels had mostly tried these singles withholding experiments on high priority acts they were developing as long term career artists from Hammer to Pearl Jam to Tupac to the Fugees to no Doubt, even the Rembrandts scored more than one hit. But the labels eventually got so successful at their no singles tactics they began thinking, maybe we can get a multi platinum album from an act for whom we have no serious intention of promoting more than one song. What if we got people to pay full price for a CD by a one hit wonder? Amazingly, and due in no small part to a booming US economy in the late 90s, it worked. Millions of consumers paid just shy of a Hamilton for full length CDs by acts with a single radio hit. This phase of the great war against the single stoked the greatest consumer resentment. I call this the one Good Song period. Ask anyone, Gen Xer or Millennial, who was alive and buying music in the late 1990s about this period and they'll grumble about paying $16 to acquire one good song. Arguably the first really big one came from a band no one ever expected to generate. Britain's Chumbawamba, a self described anarchist collective that doubled as a band, had been around since the mid-1980s, scoring no hits either in their homeland or in America and making trouble. Trouble like titling an album in 1986, just after live Aid pictures of starving children sell records. Yet in 1997 they happened upon a single that married their agit prop with catchy pop. They called it tub thumping, a word that never appears in the song, a British term for political declaiming and bandwagon jumping. The ode to barroom philosophers who bend your ear while getting soused was issued as a CD single in the early fall of 1997, but Republic Records cleverly pressed only 70,000 copies total. A typical top 10 hit might sell that much in a week. Tub Thumping was allowed entry onto the Hot 100, and even as its stock of singles sold out in weeks, it climbed the chart as the song's chanting chorus took over top 40 radio. By Christmas 1997, tub thumping was the top song at US radio. Like Hammer's yous Can't Touch this, its minimal sales meant it never cracked the Hot 100 top five. But after nine weeks as the most played song at radio, Chumbawamba's Tub Thumper album had sold a staggering 3.2 million copies, all off its only hit. The Anarchists never troubled the Hot 100 again. They weren't the only ones. Tubthumper was part of a roughly three year wave of acts who managed one major airplay hit, racked up a million or even millions in album sales, and never reached the top of radio playlists again. Many of these hits were actually good, most were at least fun, and at least one song in early 1998 was a Grammy winner. Sonny Came Home by Sean Colvin took home Record of the Year and Song of the year at the 1998 Grammys. In the prior summer of 1997, the single was pressed in limited retail quantities just so it could appear on the Hot 100 when it was already the most played song at US radio. It spent a month as the top airplay track and was Colvin's only Hot 100 hit. Its album, a Few Small Repairs, became her only platinum seller. Or try this one. Barbie Girl, a novelty dance pop single by the Scandinavian group Aqua, built with weeks of airplay before their American label MCA issued the single in a limited edition in the fall of 1997. Copies of the retail single were exhausted quickly, but by Christmas, Aqua's album Aquarium was double platinum. Within two years, the album was triple.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Platinum. This is how I feel I'm cold and I am shamed Lying naked.

[Chris Molanphy]

On the floor Illusion Torn, by Australian model, soap opera actress and pop singer Natalie Imbruglia, spent 11 weeks in 1998 as American radio's top song. Torn was never issued as a single and as a result Imbruglia's album Left of the Middle went double.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Platinum. Everything's Gonna Be.

[Chris Molanphy]

Alright. Southern rocker Sean Mullins issued his album Souls Core in the summer of 1998, containing the smash Lullaby by December. Lullaby, though never issued as a single, was the most heard song at radio, and Mullins, who never placed another song on a Billboard chart, saw his Souls Core album turn platinum by the following year. Saved Tonight was the sole hit by Eagle Eye Cherry, Swedish son of jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and half brother of rapper singer Nina Cherry, unlike his half sister, who 10 years earlier had released the hip hop track Buffalo Stance at retail and wound up with a no. 3 hit. Eagle Eye did not release his four minutes of fame as a single. Save Tonight wound up one of the biggest radio hits of the winter of 1998 and 99, and his album Desireless went platinum more than twice the sales of his siblings 1989 album Raw.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Like Sushi A little bit of Monica in my life A little bit of Erica by my side, A little bit of.

[Chris Molanphy]

Rita. Lou Bega, a German born Latin pop musician proffering a kitschy brand of modern mambo, scored a global hit in the summer of 1999 with his dance pop take on Perez Prado's 1950s classic Mambo no. 5. Amazingly, even Bega's gleefully junky record went unreleased on CD single, compelling more than 3 million Americans to buy his album A Little Bit of Mambo. Eiffel 65, an Italian dance producer trio, kept their global hit Blue off of all American singles formats save for 12 inch vinyl. The maddeningly catchy late 1999 single managed a number six peak on the Hot 100, but their CD Europop again, an album by a fairly anonymous trio of Italo house producers who would Never score another US hit, nonetheless went double platinum about a year before Lewega's and Eiffel 65's short lived but lucrative novelty hits. When the Great War against the single had reached its frothy apex, Billboard waved a white flag. At the end of 1998 they finally changed the Hot 100's rules to allow airplay only hits to appear on the chart. It was a move Billboard had been resisting for years, ever since the Great War had started skewing the chart around 1995. Music retailers were a major part of Billboard's readership, and they did not want to encourage the labels to issue even features fewer singles than they already were. Store managers had begun complaining that the dearth of singles meant tweens, and teens walking into stores with a 5 or $10 bill in their pockets had little to buy. Retail chain managers fretted openly that the industry was discouraging a generation of young music consumers from developing the music buying habit. At least the incentive to score a hot 100 hit would spur the labels to issue singles here and there. But for Billboard, leaving non retail singles off the Hot 100 was damaging the chart's status as America's premier pop barometer. The rule change was a simple acknowledgment of business reality all of the songs I've just mentioned were by acts with a single radio Smash. But by 1997, 98 and 99, artists as big as Janet Jackson, Will Smith and Foo Fighters were withholding singles on a case by case basis and disappearing from the Hot 100 as well as repeat hitmakers like Jewel, Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray. The rule changes in 1998 thrust several non single radio hits onto the Hot 100 for the first time, including a Goo Goo Doll song that had been dominating radio playlists for half the.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Year. I just want you to know who I.

[Chris Molanphy]

Am. Iris from the City of Angels soundtrack had been the most played song AT radio for 18 weeks in the summer and fall of 98, even longer than no Doubt's Don't Speak two years earlier. When Billboard made the rule switch in December, Iris materialized on the Hot 100 at number nine, but of course it would have been a number one hit had the rule change happened two or three months earlier. Gugu Doll's Iris exists in chart history limbo, officially a number nine hit, but unofficially one of the biggest singles of the entire.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

1990S. Want you to know who I.

[Chris Molanphy]

Am. The sad fact of all these phases in the singles war is that the labels were, if craven, also correct. Withholding singles does force a certain subset of your audience to pay for the full length, but the decade long elimination of the single gave pop lovers and chart watchers whiplash as they went from the 80s mode of hearing hit acts like Michael Jackson and Madonna saturate radio with a string of singles to hearing one hit per album burned out for the better part of a year. The music business peaked in 1999 and 2000, when the compact disc was king and the industry exerted maximum control over which songs got released and when. With album cuts now allowed on the Hot 100 and CDs by even the most fleeting acts selling millions, the recording industry's decade long experiment had proved seemingly victorious. If this podcast were an episode of VH1's classic tawdry docudrama behind the Music and I were the narrator, I'd be telling you right now that the subject in question was riding high, and you'd know a reckoning was close at hand. Well, here it comes. What finally ended the great war against the single wasn't anything to do with radio friendly unit shifters or chart policy rappers or grunge stars or pop stars. It was something that the music industry at last couldn't control. And this smash hit sounded like this Napster, a peer to peer file sharing Technology that allowed the easy trading of songs in the bandwidth friendly MP3 format made its debut in the song Summer of 1999, a few months after 18 year old computer programmer Sean Fanning dropped out of Northeastern University. Napster was not the first MP3 trading online platform, but it was the most user friendly and it kicked off the decimation of the music business as it was previously known. Volumes of text have been written in the past two decades about how Napster came about and the havoc it wreaked on the recording industry. But one word I rarely see in narratives about file sharing is the word karma. When you look at recent pop music history from the perspective of the single and the industry's decade long efforts to kill it, the rise of Napster and file sharing in 1999 doesn't simply read as people wanting free stuff or deciding they prefer portable digital music. Rather, to me as a singles fan, it reads as a true rebellion, not just against the erratic quality and high prices of CDs in the 90s, but to the very idea that the album is the fundamental core of music. No albums are great, but the song is the fundamental unit of music as it has been for centuries. It's as if the recording industry misread human nature back in the 60s and couldn't admit it made a mistake. Once the industry's economic model, indeed its entire infrastructure demanded that we buy music in bundles, they couldn't dial it back. As music sales began to Crater in 2001, the recording industry tried everything to put the file sharing genie back in the bottle, up to and including suing some of its own consumers. Let's just say that the optics of that legal effort weren't appealing. Finally, in 2003, they threw in their lot with this tech wizard, you can buy for 99 cents per song with no subscription fee. Now, how much is 99 cents? Is that a lot? A little, we think it's not so much. How many of you had a Starbucks latte this morning? Three bucks. That's three songs. How many lattes got sold across the US this morning? A lot. 99 cents is pretty affordable. When Apple founder Steve Jobs negotiated with the record labels to sell their music on his new itunes music store, he held firm on one key negotiating for the sake of user friendliness and transparency. Apparently every song in the store would be available for sale for about a dollar. In that one detail, Steve Jobs upended four decades of music industry gospel and he revived the singles market. Now, in essence, there was no such thing as the album cut all Songs were singles within a half decade. Even some digital music holdouts like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles of allowed their music to be sold digitally a la carte. So for the first time in history, you could buy Stairway to Heaven for the price of a cup of coffee. And when the Beatles put their catalog on iTunes in 2010, their best selling digital song wasn't one of their big chart singles like Yesterday or Hey Jude. It was a song that had never been issued as a single. Even in the 60s, the George Harrison album cut Here Comes the Sun. Who knew? If the band had released Here Comes The sun as a 45 in 1969, it likely would have been a Hot 100 topping hit. The transformation of albums into sampler platters of undifferentiated singles also had a huge impact on the charts. Billboard added digital sales to the Hot 100 in 2005, and it had a radical effect on how songs became hits, including what kinds of songs became hits. We'll talk about those changes in future episodes of Hit parade in the 2000 and tens with streaming music taking over the industry, albums today behave like playlists, and the consumer is more empowered than ever. Labels still pick the hits they promote to radio, but listeners vote with their clicks for the songs they like best. Nearly three decades after EMI and Capitol Records tried to prevent you from buying you Can't Touch this. And what about the man who recorded that smash hit, the Archduke Ferdinand who started music's great war? None of MC Hammer's albums after 1990 sold much more than a fraction, as well as Please hammer, don't hurt em. And infamously, in the mid-90s, Hammer declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy after years of profligate spending. But Hammer's staying power is remarkable. Just a couple of weeks before I recorded this episode, in early September 2017, Hammer surprised the industry by mounting a concert at the massive Staples center in Los Angeles. When asked by the LA Times how more than a quarter century after his peak and he was headlining a concert for so many people, Hammer replied, they already know the music. You're not doing a story about a guy trying to make an audience. My music's already been heard by billions. Billions. And you know, he has a point. Billions might be a stretch. And the truth is, few of his vintage hits receive much radio airplay today besides yous can't touch this. But 27 years ago, that song was a powerful enough hit that at least 10 million Americans decided even if it was going to cost them, they had to own it. And at least a few thousand of them were in the Staples Center a couple of weeks ago. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer is Chris Perubin. The Executive Producer of Slate Podcasts is Steve Licht. Panoply's Chief Content Officer is Andy Bowers. Check out their entire roster of podcasts at Panoply fm. One more reminder that Hit Parade now has its own feed in addition to appearing in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. Subscribe to Hit Parade now, tell your friends and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris.

[Various Music Artists (MC Hammer, Roxette, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rembrandts, Alanis Morissette, Fugees, Tupac Shakur, No Doubt, Chumbawamba, Sean Colvin, Aqua, Natalie Imbruglia, Sean Mullins, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lou Bega, Eiffel 65, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.)]

Melany. Break it down, I. Stop hammer time, Go with the phone. It is said if you can't prove it, you probably are. Dance away your hands in the.