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Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Smells Like Christmas Spirit, Part 2
00:46:15
In Part 2 of this episode of Hit Parade, we continue the story of how Nirvana’s Nevermind ousted Michael Jackson’s Dangerous from the top of the Billboard album chart,
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanphy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One Series. On our last episode, I explained the concept of the data lag on the charts, how the gap between when Billboard collects data and the date on its charts means your birthday song might not be your real life birthday song. And that's an important concept to understand what happened in December 1991 and January 1992 when Nirvana took on Michael Jackson in a now legendary battle on the Billboard album chart. In November 1991, just before Thanksgiving, pop superstar Michael Jackson emerged with his first new album of the 90s, the follow up to his 1987 blockbuster Bad. The new disc was called Dangerous and it was greeted with a level of hype more akin to the Olympics than a pop album. Jackson's label, Epic, insisted the media refer to him for the first time ever as the King of Pop and most journalists and fans dutifully obliged. And the whole Dangerous campaign kicked off two weeks before the album drop with the first single and one very expensive video. So get on up. Here it is, the world premiere of Michael Jackson. Black or White Black or White wasn't just a video, it was an event in America. It premiered simultaneously on MTV, VH1, BET and Fox, as well as the BBC's Top of the Pops in the UK. The global audience for black or white across 27 countries was estimated at 500 million viewers. The clip featured cameos by Macaulay Culkin, George Wendt from NBC's Cheers, and supermodel Tyra Banks in a face swapping CGI sequence featuring the then novel technology called morphing. And oh yeah, the song, it was pretty infectious. Black or White was Michael Jackson's discourse on racism in the form of a pop song with a brain colonizing guitar riff that echoed John Mellencamp's Hurts so Good and a mid song rap by producer Bill Bottrell. It was also a chart dominating insurance policy all but guaranteed to command the Hot 100. Sure enough, in just its third week, black or white shot to number one. The Black or White video was not without controversy. After the song was over, the video kept going for several more minutes in which an angry Jackson, presumably incensed by racism, smashed a car, zipped his fly and touched himself in the area of his crotch. The clown closing segment disturbed enough parents that MTV and other outlets mostly stopped playing the tail end of the clip and Jackson apologized and issued an edit to the video that CGI'd in anti racist messages on the car windows. But if, as they say, controversy is good for business, the contrite Jackson made bank the Dangerous album debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at number one in early December 1991. Now, at this point, Nirvana's Nevermind was still in the top 10, But it looked like it had gone about as far as it would go. The album had fallen back to number six, stuck behind not only Jackson's Dangerous, but other heavily hyped fourth quarter albums like rapper Hammer's Too Legit to Quit. And the Mother Mom Friendly growly voiced balladeer Michael Bolton. Going into Christmas week on the official Billboard album chart for the week ending December 28, 1991, Jackson, Hammer and Bolton were all in the top five alongside Garth Brooks and U2, all established multi platinum sellers. Nirvana's Nevermind was stalled at number six, although the album was now certified platinum, Billboard album chart analyst Jeff Mayfield predicted that after selling more than 300,000 copies a week through the entire holiday season, Michael Jackson was poised to dominate the album chart deep into the winter. That's what made the chart that Billboard published just after the new year such a jolt. Nirvana leapt all the way from number six to number one on the Billboard 200, knocking out Michael Jackson's Dangerous. Remember, about a month before, Nevermind had fallen back from number four to number six, suggesting that the album had peaked on the chart. What virtually no one was expecting was for Nirvana to reverse course and hurdle to number one. For the record, not only were chart fans stunned like your Hit Parade host who clearly remembers almost dropping the new Billboard magazine at a Tower records in early January 1992 out of pure shock. Music biz insiders were stunned too. Longtime Billboard chartbeat columnist Paul Grein wrote, quote, nirvana pulls off an astonishing palace coup by dethroning the King of Pop, unquote, the magazine's album sales analyst Jeff Mayfield wrote, quote, industryites are still amazed by the feat Nirvana scored, unquote. Mayfield further explained that the album had grown its sales by 193,000 copies in a week, a record for the then still new soundscan system. At a time on the calendar when most albums coming out of Christmas typically sold for fewer copies, not more. About that calendar, Nirvana took over number one on the billboard issue dated January 11, 1992. However, as per my earlier explanation of the data lag in Billboard's charts, the sales used to compile this chart were collected late in the prior year to be exact, from December 23rd through the 29th, two days before the holiday Christmas itself and the four days afterward. In short, Michael Jackson was the king of the 1991 Christmas buying season. Nirvana were the rulers of post Christmas. And what is post Christmas in the music world? It's when consumers, mostly teenagers, spend the gift cards they've received or maybe exchange a CD or a tape they will were given for one they like better. Now we don't have data proving conclusively that armies of 1991 teenagers brought their copies of Michael Jackson's Dangerous back to Sam Goody and swapped them for Nirvana's Nevermind. Though it is interesting that this week of massive sales growth for Nevermind, an album with an insolent, punk worthy and now iconic image on its cover of a baby swimming after a dollar on a fishing hook, fell mostly between Christmas and New Year's, when high school and college kids were hanging out at home. What we can say conclusively is more Americans in the closing days of 1991 bought Nevermind likely for themselves than they did CDs by Michael Jackson or Michael Bolton or Hammer or U2. As I indicated, Nirvana's chart coup was revealed days before January 11, 2019 92, the date on the official chart. But on the night of the actual January 11th, that was a busy day for the band. Ladies and gentlemen, Nirvana. Nirvana made their network TV debut that very night on Saturday Night Live, playing their smash Smells Like Teen Spirit. That same week, the song had reached its peak of number six on the Hot 100. Later in the evening, for their second SNL showcase, perhaps to indicate they hadn't become soft bellied pop hitmakers, the band with the official number one album in America performed the Nevermind deep cut Territorial Pissing. This SNL showcase would return Nevermind to number one on the Hot 100, but three weeks later, after its first stint in the top slot, by the way, there's that data lag again. Garth Brooks went back to number one for a couple of weeks in between. Anyway. For the rest of the winter and spring of 1992, Nirvana was lodged in the album chart's top 10 or top 20 and generated further hits like Come as yous Are. Nevermind went quadruple platinum by June. It would eventually be certified diamond for 10 million in sales. As for Michael Jackson, his Dangerous album never returned to number one, although it did generate six more top 40 hits, including the number two hit Remember the Time. The truth is, Jackson's Dangerous did just fine. It sold 7 million in the US and ranked as the second biggest album of 1992 behind Garth Brooks Rope in the Wind, but over Nirvana's Nevermind, which ranked third for the year. Still, the perception of Nirvana's chart coup was paramount. The idea that an upstart band on only its first major label album could overtake the self proclaimed King of pop, it was irresistible to the media. Verbs like pushed, shoved, steamrolled and knocked out were used in headlines to describe what Kurt Cobain's trio did to Jackson. They made it sound like Nirvana had plotted the attack. But of course, nothing about Nirvana's coup was planned. Sales expectations were modest. Nirvana's label, DGC Records, run by mogul David Geffen, was only hoping Nevermind might sell as well as the last Sonic youth album. Maybe 100,000 copies if they were lucky, not millions. The album came out in September and it took more than three months to reach number one. Typically, albums expected to dominate the holiday season come out in October or November. This was a well established industry practice from the 80s into the early 90s. Albums as huge and Christmas dominating as Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down, Bruce Springsteen's live box set, George michael's faith. And Whitney Houston's Bodyguard soundtrack. All came out a few weeks before Thanksgiving and crucially ahead of Black Friday, when retailers rang up their strongest sales of the year. Releasing an album in that window was a signal to the marketplace this is a glossy, high quality product that can be wrapped in and placed under the tree. But in the Soundscan era, which started the same year Nevermind was released, The recording industry now had more finely tuned data about when certain albums sold best. So it was now possible to strategically time an album to appeal to people buying music for themselves, like Nevermind. Maybe it wasn't so crazy to issue an album deep into December that was more likely to be bought with a gift certificate by an unaccompanied young person. Not just a thrashy grunge album, but say, a gangster rap album. In 1993, former NWA member Ice Cube released his fourth studio album, Lethal Injection, on the unusually late date of December 7th. It sold well, going double platinum and peaking at number five, although that was a bit of a comedown for Cube. His prior album, 1992's The Predator, had reached number one, but other rappers kept experimenting with later release dates, including New Jersey rapper Redman, who dropped his third album, Muddy Waters, on December 10, 1996. It peaked at number 12, which was his best chart showing to date. You ready to get this Cheddar Whatever, man. You ready to start this? But experiments like ice cubes and Redman's were still the exception by the mid-90s. The week Redman's Muddy Waters debuted at number 12, the chart dated December 28, 1996, the number one spot was held by no Doubt's Tragic Kingdom, an album that was months old, which their label, Interscope Records, had been working at radio and retailers all year long. It would take until 1998 and another rising rap star to finally challenge the notion that a top selling album couldn't come out near the very end of the year. DMX Born Earl Simmons, raised in Yonkers, New York and named after the DMX programmable drum machine, emerged as the new king of hardcore rap in the late 90s after the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. there was buzz on DMX early in the decade. In 1991, the Source magazine promoted him as an unsigned hype and he spent the mid-90s on the fringes of hip hop, releasing one off singles and dropping bars on mixtapes and tracks by acts like Jay Z and LL Cool J. By the time DMX signed to Def Jam Rap's dominant label and issued his debut album In May of 1998, he was a seeming overnight sensation who'd actually been in the game for nearly a decade. His barking delivery, inspired by his years befriending stray dogs as a teenager, became his calling card. This explains how in the Late Spring of 98, DMX's friends first album, It's Dark and Hell Is Hot, debuted on top of the Billboard album chart, a rarity for a rap newcomer. And the president of Def Jam decided to challenge DMX to build on that momentum right away. He promised the rapper a million dollar bonus if he could record and release a second album before the end of the of the year. It would be a full studio album with the immediacy of a street mixtape at a time when major rappers would typically go at least a year between albums. Working with producer Swiss Beats, DMX banged out his second album with just a few weeks to spare, but before the end of the year. Of course, that meant that he would be issuing the album at the height of the holiday season and running headlong into the most dominant album seller of the decade. As we discussed in our Last hit parade, 1998 was the year country megastar Garth Brooks decided to set some chart records by releasing his first concert album, Double Live. The two CD set arrived the week of Thanksgiving 1998, and it opened to a million in sales in its first week, the first album to do so. Double Live settled in atop the chart for all of December, and it looked like it would be unstoppable until well into the new year. In the midst of Garth's run on top, Def Jam announced that DMX's second album would be out on December 22, just three days before Christmas. And the CD was not terribly Christmassy, unless your idea of Christmas is the horror movie Silent Night, Deadly night. True to DMX's street cred, the album's cover photo showed the rapper shirtless and drenched in blood. Its title was Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood. This was essentially unprecedented in the pages of Billboard, Jeff Mayfield reported. Conventional wisdom in the music business held that a title released just days before Christmas might get lost in the shuffle, might even have trouble finding its way to store shelves. Some in the industry also questioned whether it was wise to issue a new DMX album. When It's Dark and Hell Is Hot, his debut, was still lodged in the top 30. The naysayers were all proved wrong. Flesh of My Flesh Blood of My Blood debuted to sales of 670,000 copies, one of the 10 biggest weeks of the Soundscan era to date. More importantly, DMX's second album codified a new industry practice the hip hop album Drop intended for the post Christmas fan. It took Nirvana's chart topping success from seven years earlier, which again was an accident of timing, and turned it into a strategy. Were gift givers, especially parents, going to gift wrap a CD with a blood drenched DMX on the COVID Or for that matter, another Nirvana CD with a submerged baby on the COVID Not likely. Would teens buy it on their own while home for the holidays? Is hell hot? Putting out Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood before Thanksgiving wouldn't have helped it on the charts. It would have fallen short of Garth Brooks live album. Dropping it nine days from the end of the year was like a dog whistle to young music fans. This CD is for you. Merry Christmas. This became a chart trend for roughly the next decade. Each year a few mainstream parent and child friendly albums would dominate the holiday shopping season. Stuff like Celine Dion's 1999 greatest hits album all the Way, which sold 4 million copies by that Christmas. Or a Kenny G holiday album. He put out several always a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving and they always went platinum by December. And then with just days left before Christmas, the rap CDs that were guaranteed to make parents run out of the room would arrive and teens and 20 somethings would hit music stores in droves by early January. Given the Data lag on Billboard's charts, these hip hop titles would top the Billboard 200. One year after his successful Christmas week gambit, DMX returned on December 21, 1999 with his third album and then there Was X. It knocked Celine Dion from her album chart perch and became his top seller packed with his biggest hits including what's My Name And Party Up. Not to be outdone, new king of New York rap Jay Z released an album even later in 1999. He dropped his volume 3 Life and Time Times of S. Carter on December 28, 1999. In early January of 2000. In backto back weeks, first DMX and then J took turns on top of the Billboard 200. In the next several years, more rappers and hip hop friendly R B singers would drop new albums in the last half of December. On December 19, 2000, Snoop Dogg offered the Last Meal. It became his best selling CD since his 1993 debut Doggy St. On December 18, 2001, NAS released Stillmatic, a would be sequel to his classic 1994 debut Illmatic. It became his bestseller in about five years. All I need is one life, one try, one breath or one man what I stand for speaks for itself they don't understand and want to see me on top. A few years later, Queen of Hip Hop Soul Mary J. Blige dropped her CD The Breakthrough on December 20, 2005. Notably, Blige's previous album, 2003's Love and Life, had fallen off in sales, becoming her first disc not to go multi platinum. But the breakthrough returned the Queen to her throne, topping the Billboard 200 in January and going double platinum. One week after Blige's album arrived on December 27, 2005, singer and Oscar winner Jamie Foxx released Unpredictable, his first new album, after a decade from focused on his acting. Blige herself was one of Jamie Foxx's guests on the album, along with a half dozen rap superstars including Common, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, the Game and Ludacris. All aboard The Spontaneous Express Foxes UN Unpredictable followed Blige's The Breakthrough into the number one spot in January 2006, and the two discs traded the Billboard 200's top slot for more than a month. The post Christmas tactic worked wonders as album sales began to slump in the mid 2000s and the industry began its long fitful shift from physical to digital music. At first, before streaming services were invented, digital music meant downloads, which were dominated in the aughts and early tens by Apple's iTunes Music Store and here again, Christmas, and especially post Christmas had an unmistakable impact on the charts. This time, the singles charts. In January 2006, the Hot 100 was overtaken for just one week by a quirky rap track by a group that would never have a major hit again. Laffy Taffy was the handiwork of The Atlanta troupe D4L, an acronym for down for Life. They were progenitors of a microgenre called Snap Music. It was especially popular for cell phone ringtones, and D4L's hit might be the most uncluttered number one song in Hot 100 history. How exactly did D4L's skeletal hit take over the Hot 100 just after Christmas 2005? For one thing, this was the first holiday season where Apple's itunes counted for the Hot 100. For another thing, Apple's iPod was at its peak of gift giving popularity and a lot of teenagers woke up Christmas morning with a new gadget to fill with songs. And among 99 cent download buyers, Laffy Taffy was a smack. The week after Christmas 2005, from December 26 through January 1, Laffy Taffy sold $175,000 downloads a record. At the time, the previous record, set by Kanye West's 2005 hit Gold Digger was only 8,81,000 downloads. D4L in a single week doubled that total. In essence, this was DMX's post Christmas business model shifting to cyberspace and to the singles chart. Songs that people over 25 had little interest in were snapped up by young people filling their new ipods and cashing in their itunes gift cards for the next half dozen Christmases. As the itunes store kept growing in popularity, download sales the week after the holiday kept setting sales records. Just after Christmas 2007, Sunshine State rapper Flo Rida sold $467,000 downloads of his smash with T Pain Low, the song that, as my stepdaughter knows, is all about Apple Bottom Jeans and Boots with the fur. Post Christmas 2009, new pop star and kinda rapper Kesha saw her debut single TikTok surge to number one after selling 610,000 downloads in a single week. And in 2011, EDM pop rap duo LMFAO sold 812,000 downloads in two weeks just before and just after Christmas of their goofball hit Sexy and I Know it, pushing that song to number one. I'm sexy and I know it. It's good that the music business was selling so many downloads in the late aughts and early tens. Because albums were off massively, the dynamics on the Billboard 200 album chart had shifted. Now that teenagers were gravitating towards single downloads, they the albums that sold best tended to skew older during this period. Christmas albums did especially well, whether they were by Josh Groban, whose 2007 seasonal CD Noel became the year's top seller in the final weeks of the year, selling 4 million copies in just two months, Or reality TV discovery Susan Boyle, Simon Cowell's protege from the X Factor. She scored back to back number one albums in two consecutive holiday seasons in 2009 and 2010. That we would live years together. What this meant was that the DMX post Christmas model for rap albums was starting to Wane in 2011. Trap kingpin Jeezy released his latest album Thug Motivation 103 Hustler's Ambition on December 20, but it only managed a number three debut, his first major label album, not to debut at either number one or number two. And why did Jeezy fall short? Because the Billboard 200 that Christmas was dominated by the Michael Buble Christmas album, its sales that week were roughly double. Jeezy's album beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere you go. The 2000 and tens were going to need a new business model for albums aimed at young people. As pop, rap and R B fans were all migrating to the digital realm, cutting edge megastars would need a way to generate the kind of excitement that a Christmas week album drop used to inspire at the peak of DMX and Jay Z and the person who pulled it off happened to be Jay Z's wife. In an album release that is now considered legendary, Beyonce issued her fifth solo studio album, the self titled Beyonce, as an itunes exclusive on December 13, 2013 with no warning whatsoever. It was, if you will, a proof of concept that an album in the digital era didn't need weeks of pre release hype or even a physical CD release. Mind you, the surprise digital album was not a totally new idea. Back in 2007, cutting edge British rock band Radiohead, who had just completed a major label contract, self released their seventh studio album, In Rainbows, exclusively online with only days of advance notice. The move delighted Radiohead's rabid fans, who were invited to pay whatever they wanted for the digital album before it later went on sale as a traditional CD and vinyl lp. Six years later, what made Beyonce's move pathbreaking was her surprise album was a total surprise. The project was kept completely secret for months by BE's team of writers producers, musicians and even video directors. The Beyonce album was sold with a glossy music video for each track. Forget Radiohead's days of advance notice, the Beyonce album was issued with minutes of advance notes. This. And it was a blockbuster. Be dropped the album on a Thursday, which at the time was in the middle of Billboard's chart week, seemingly a handicap. It didn't matter. Beyonce sold 617,000 copies in the US in just three days as an itunes exclusive, making it an easy number one on the album chart, outselling discs that had been on sale all week. Right through the holiday season, Beyonce kept selling even though it was only available digitally. In its three weeks at number one, the album sold 1.3 million copies that buyers couldn't even wrap and and put under the tree. Like Nirvana's album in 1991 or DMX's in 1998, Beyonce's album was a Christmas gift fans gave themselves. By February, Drunk in Love, the lead single from Beyonce with rap support from her husband Jay z, reached number two on the Hot 100, returning Queen Bey to the chart's top five for the first time in four years. The surprise album gambit had not only restored Beyonce to her place atop pop's Mount Olympus, it redefined the headline grabbing album release for the digital generation. In the years since 2013, the dropping a surprise digital album has been called colloquially. Pulling a Beyonce queen bee herself has followed the template several times, dropping surprise projects like her 2016 masterpiece Lemonade. It too arrived with no advance warning, launching exclusively on the streaming service Tidal and as a mini movie on hbo. They don't love you like I love you Slow down They don't love you like I love you Back up they don't Unlike the Beyonce album, Lemonade was not issued around the holidays. Be dropped it in late April 2016. In fact, numerous superstars have followed Beyonce with surprise digital albums all over the calendar, from Drake to Eminem to J. Cole to Childish Gambino. Following Bea's template most closely was neo soul singer d', Angelo, who surprised released his long awaited comeback album Black Messiah on December 15, 2014, one year after Beyonce. As late as last year, hip hop acts were still scoring number one albums by issuing them in the DMX style. December window On December 21, 2018, rapper 21 Savage released his album I Am Greater Than I Was and it was on top of the album chart by early January 2019. How many times did you ride? A lot how many, how many times did you cheat? A lot how many times did you lie? A lot it's funny to consider that all of these holiday related release tactics started with a fortuitous week of sales 29 years ago by a fledgling grunge band. And Nirvana didn't even have to record a Christmas song to change the game. Let's do a verse of the song. Okay, ready? We wish you a merry Christmas we wish you a merry Christmas. By the way, that's Kurt Cobain, Kris Novoselic and Dave Grohl with the only recorded evidence while Cobain was still alive, of the trio singing a Christmas song. They were shooting a promo for, of all people, RuPaul for his early 90s TV talk Show Me. Maybe Nirvana never released a Christmas song. It wouldn't have been their style, not even ironically. But Taylor Swift certainly has. Since she broke a decade and a half ago, Swift has recorded several holiday songs for various compilations, none of them a big hit. Cuz there were Christmases when you were mine why do I bring up Taylor Swift in December 2020? Because she's pulled a Beyonce twice this year and her very latest album is a Christmas surprise in the space of just five months while the world was on lockdown during the COVID 19 pandemic, Swift recorded two surprise albums, a totally unprecedented move for an artist who previously recorded on a fairly regimented every two years album schedule, and pre promoted her releases for weeks or even months. That all changed in 2020 first with Taylor's acclaimed August release Folklore. Giv me a weekend. And literally while we were preparing this Hit Parade episode, Swift dropped the immediate Folklore followup Evermore. It even includes a more mature Taylor holiday song, the wintry, brooding and contemplative T the damn season. This new album approach is really working for Taylor. Folklore spent eight weeks at number one in the summer and fall this year, the longest any of her albums has spent on top in more than five years. And Evermore is widely expected to be atop the charts the week of Christmas and likely deep into January. As Taylor Swift and frankly, all of us settle our brains for a long winter's nap, curling up with our music to get us through lockdown, let's raise a glass to Taylor and Beyonce, Nirvana and even dmx. This year especially, it's good to know our musical favorites can still surprise rises. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer for this episode was Benjamin Frisch and we also had help from Rosemary Belson. Thanks also to join Jeff Mayfield for research support. Jeff is our special guest on a new episode of Hit the Bridge, available exclusively to Slate plus members. In that Bridge episode, Jeff and I talk about how the post Christmas chart strategy came into being. To sign up for Slate plus and hear that show and all our shows the day they're released, visit slate.com hitparadeplus June Thomas is the Senior Managing Producer and Gabriel Roth the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. 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 Wild. I'm Chris Melanfi.