← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The Posthumous Hits Edition, Live from Seattle
01:27:48
Dearly beloved, we gather on the charts to get through this thing called life…and death. Live from MoPOP in Seattle, Hit Parade tells the stories of some of the biggest chart-toppers from beyond the grave.
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- [00:00]
Emily J. Lordy
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:06]
Chris Melanphy
Hi there Hit Parade listeners. This is Chris Melanphy with a short disclaimer.
- [00:11]
The show you're about to hear was.
- [00:12]
Recorded live in Seattle earlier this month at the Museum of Pop Culture. It was an amazing night. However, due to a technical issue with the mics on stage and our recording equipment, we had some audio issues. In the recording you're about to hear in a few spots where I am talking over a song clip I am.
- [00:31]
A little hard to hear here, we've.
- [00:33]
Left in just a few of these spots which are fortunately pretty brief. We've also re recorded some of our guest intros where the audio was not up to snuff.
- [00:43]
So if you hear a few spots.
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Where the audio sounds different, that's why we did have a fantastic night with amazing guests and a lively popcon audience. And hopefully our enthusiasm comes across here. And now on with the show.
- [01:01]
Please give it up for Chris Melanphy.
- [01:09]
Audience/Contestants
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.
- [01:26]
Chris Melanphy
Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast coming to you live from the Museum of Pop Culture, AKA Mopop in Seattle, Washington. I am Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop Critic, writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series and also a proud presenter at the Pop Conference, MoPOP's annual gathering of music academics, critics, journalists and and all around obsessives. We are here on the final night of Popcon 2019 and as you can hopefully hear out there in podcast land, I am being joined tonight by a couple of hundred friends and colleagues. Say hello friends. I want to take just a moment to explain to my listeners why I am so honored to be hosting an episode of my podcast right here. But maybe it is best explained by a man who has on occasion called himself King Nerd.
- [02:24]
Charles Hughes
So naturally I'm a fan of Seattle's Rock and Roll Museum that keeps the music alive with their annual PUP Conference. It's a weekend long music festival in the tradition of Woodstock and Coachella. But instead of jamming to your favorite band, you're jamming to a series of panel discussions and presentations of scholarly papers. You know their motto, Less rock, more talk. Well, this year's Pop Conference has so many amazing dissertations. Once again, my scholarly paper did not make the cut. This year they have rejected Self Love in an Elevator, Apollonian images of Hedonism, Eroticism and the mechanized urban landscape in Post Comeback Aerosmith, if you can believe that.
- [03:12]
Chris Melanphy
I for one would have loved to hear that Aerosmith paper. And as would be presenter Stephen Colbert noted, popcon is indeed where music geeks go to probe the inner workings of what makes music tickets. Dissecting the art and the science of this populist craft. Does this sound familiar? More than once, fellow critics have told me they think of Hit Parade as a monthly popcon paper turned into a podcast. Guilty as charged, indeed. Two years ago this month, I announced the launch of this podcast right here at this conference. Just moments before delivering my 2017 Popcon paper. Colbert would have a field day with this one. Lifting my voice, plugging one ear, a charts based history of the charitable celebrity mega single We Are the World.
- [04:00]
Audience/Contestants
We Are the Children.
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Chris Melanphy
Three months later, that paper became the fourth episode of Hit Parade. And a couple months after that, my 2011 popcon paper singles going Steady. The record industry's vacillating relationship with the retail single is reflected in a half century of the Billboard Hot 100 that became Hit Parade's great war against the Single Edition. Can't touch this. Can't touch this. Bottom line, can't touch this. If you've been enjoying this podcast, you have been listening to popcon content without even knowing it. I personally have been attending POPCON for just over a decade, since 2008, but the conference dates back to 2002, when it was founded by academics and critics Eric Weisbard and Ann Powers. Thank you Eric and Anne. And sponsored. Let's hear it for him. And sponsored by the Experience Music Project, now renamed Mopop. And for most of its 18 years, it's been held every April right here at the museum's super cool building right next to the Space Needle. Designed by Frank Gehry, Mopop resembles nothing so much as a Jimi Hendrix smashed guitar.
- [05:16]
Audience/Contestants
You make my horns.
- [05:17]
Chris Melanphy
I will not be the only music writer up here dropping science on you all. Tonight I'm going to be joined by six Pop Conference presenters, all esteemed writers in their fields, for mini conversations about the legendary artists we're going to discuss in this episode. It's the kind of party only a bunch of cerebral culture vultures could possibly throw.
- [05:35]
Audience/Contestants
It's a death mess party. Who could ask for more?
- [05:40]
Chris Melanphy
Every year, the conference organizers pick a theme, a broad topic around which all of the discussion will revolve for that year. This year's theme, chosen by our fearless popcon leader Charles Hughes and his organizing committee, is only you and your ghost Will Music, Death and afterlife.
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I ain't frame an old ghost.
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I'm playing that song to lighten the mood. As popcon themes go, this is one of the more provocative and morbid. But I will admit I was pretty psyched when I heard that this would be the theme for the popcon where I would be doing a live show. Because as you may have heard, rock and soul have generated no shortage of material from, and even about the great beyond David.
- [06:21]
Audience/Contestants
It looks like mourning.
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Chris Melanphy
Every movie in every cinema is about death.
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Audience/Contestants
Death sells.
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Chris Melanphy
I think he's right.
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Audience/Contestants
There's something about this that's so black, it's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.
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Chris Melanphy
You're like rationalizing the Spinal Tap manager Ian Faith has a point. Crass as it sounds, death does sell. We have decades of chart evidence to back us up on this. I'm going to present some of that evidence tonight. And as in our last live show in Brooklyn last year, I will also be inviting my live audience here in Seattle to take part by answering some trivia questions. So without further ado, and at the risk of literally trivializing the rock and roll afterlife, let's get this Night of the Living Dead party started. A posthumous hit is specifically defined as a song or an album recorded by an artist that makes the charts after his or her death. Depending on how many charts you look at. There have been dozens, perhaps hundreds of such hits from Eddie Cochran, who died way back in 1960.
- [07:27]
Audience/Contestants
Now there is Steps to Heaven. Are three steps to heaven.
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Chris Melanphy
To just last year Ms. Aretha Franklin. Instances like this, the public collectively decides to focus their grief at the loss of an artist on one particular work, a song or album that takes on new resonance in the wake of their passing. Indeed, speaking of wakes, this chart activity serves a ceremonial purpose, a mass scale eulogy. Often it happens immediately and in the 21st century. Now that the charts are powered by instantaneous digital data, Billboard will often report sales or streaming figures just days after a death wherein the deceased's material rises by thousands of percentage points. Tracking these posthumous chart moves might seem crass, maybe even a bit gruesome. But the evidence is also revealing. When confronted with the loss of a well known artist, what of their work do we organically gravitate towards? How do we celebrate and mourn them? When George Michael died On Christmas Day 2016, unsurprisingly, his most played song at radio that day was wham's Perennial and now sadder than ever last Christmas. But who might have guessed a few days later that the most downloaded song would be his contemporaneous Wham. Ballad Careless Whisper, its suave sax now suddenly turned sorrow. Or When Tom Petty died the following October, many of his most played tracks were fairly predictable, such as the wistful Free Falling or the defiant at the Gates of Hell. I won't back down. But I was charmed in that first week to learn that among his five biggest posthumous sellers was his 1994 stoner dude hit, you Don't Know How It Feels. Its very title now sounding like an encomium. We will march our hit parade to nine different weeks, test your knowledge of the songs Americans requested, bought and streamed in order to pay their respects. Let's get right to the first question. We're going back to the 1950s and predictably, the so called day the music died. And I promise that is the last time you will hear that shopworn phrase tonight. So I understand that nine of our live attendees tonight have been given numbers corresponding with our nine trivia questions. Can I get contestant number one? Hi. Hello. What is your name? I am Jennifer. Jennifer, thank you so much. How about a big welcome for our first contestant? And away we go. Of these rock legends, who's the only one who wrote a hit that reached number one on the Hot 100 after February 3, 1959? A, the big Bopper, B, Buddy Holly, C, Richie Valens or D Don McLean? I'm gonna go with D, Don McLean. Oh, I'm sorry, the correct answer is C, Richie Valens, but thank you so much for playing. So choice D was extraneous on American Pie, his hit Don McLean sings about the fateful night that permanently joined these other three men's fates. On February 3, 1950, they boarded a doomed four seat Beechcraft Bonanza airplane taking off from Mason City, Iowa, bound for Morehead, Minnesota, a destination they would never reach. Also fairly easy to eliminate is Choice A, JP Richardson Jr. Aka the Big Bopper, who is essentially a one hit wonder, albeit a pretty great hit. Hello baby, yeah, this is the Big Bopper speaking. The portly Jolly Bopper earned his legendary status for Chantilly Lace. Enshrined at the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, it did make the pop top 10, peaking at number six in November 1958.
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Jack Hamilton
Chantilly lace had a pretty face and.
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Audience/Contestants
A ponytail hanging down.
- [11:39]
Chris Melanphy
But the Bopper was having a hard time following it up. His even more self referential single, Big Bopper's Wedding barely scraped the top 40 at number 38 and its flip side, Little Red Riding Hood peaked at number 70. That leaves two candidates for posthumous hit making Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Obviously, Holly's catalog of hits is an American treasure trove and a blueprint for so much of what rock would become in future decades. Among these three, Holly was the only one to score a chart topping hit while alive, peaking at number one on Billboard's Best Sellers in Stores chart, a precursor to the Hot 100 with that'll Be the Day on September 23, 1957. Finally, Richie Valens. Not only was the young man born Ricardo Valenzuela the youngest of these three, just 17 the night of their fateful flight, he also had something special chart wise. A hit that spanned the weeks before and after the plane crash, his tender ballad Donna. It was at number three the week of the incident, but it reached a new peak of number two three weeks later. Given how much slower the charts were compiled in Those days, this February 23, 1959 peak was essentially immediate. Donna was both Valens's final hit and his first posture. The single's B side slotted there out of a belief that it would be a tougher sell on Anglophone radio, was Valens rocked up cover of the old Mexican folk song La Bamboo. It was potent enough to chart in its own right, peaking at number 22 in the early weeks of 1959, just before the plane crash. But decades later, that song would become even more famous when two of the three stars from rock's first major tragedy were enshrined at the cinema. Both Holly and Valens were the subject of rock biopics decades after their deaths. Holly's arrived in 1978 with director Steve Rash's the Buddy Holly Story, a biopic that won nearly universal acclaim for the Academy Award. Nominated lead performance by Gary Busey. Yes, that Gary Busey. Yes, an Oscar nomination. And Busey won the National Society of Film Critics award for best actor. Besides renting the movie, you can still watch Busey's performances as Holly on YouTube. And he is indeed impressive, actually singing and playing himself and fully embodying the young Holly. Nine years later, in the summer of 1987, came director Luis Valdez's La Bamba, the story of Ritchie Valens, starring Filipino American actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who, like Busey, was considerably older at the time of filming than the deceased rock star he was playing. La Bamba was more of a popcorn picture, earning no nominations but generally acclaimed for Phillips performance and its portrayal of Chicano culture. Both movies were modest hits, earning a multiple of their respective budgets, and both spawned soundtracks. But one soundtrack was a curio, the other a phenomenon. Despite arriving in the same 1978 summer that turned Grease's 50s nostalgia into a blockbuster LP. The Buddy Holly Story soundtrack featuring Gary Busey's performances of Holly's material, stalled at number 86 on the album chart. In a fairly brief chart run, it split the market with a near simultaneous compilation of Holly's own material with the crickets 20 golden greats, which wound up charting modestly higher at number 55. That Holly LP would eventually go gold. The Busey album not so much. In theory, a decade later, La Bamba should have done not much better. It too was a soundtrack filled not with original tracks but with covers. Perhaps the crucial difference was that these covers were not by actor Lou Diamond Phillips, although he does lip sync in the music video for the film's title track. That track was performed with furious energy by East LA band Los Lobos, who took both the La Bamba single and album to number one on their respective charts. As the album went double platinum in the late summer and fall of 1987. Ritchie Valens had never been more popular, and for simply revamping a Mexican folk song from Veracruz, he earned sole writing credit on a Hot 100 number one hit. It is a curious thing how the public will embrace an artist who feels fresh and new to them. By the 1970s, Buddy Holly was a radio staple, and for all of Busey's acclaimed his Holly mostly felt like an acting A decade later, a Chicano artist who died younger and with a much smaller catalog had the width of the new to Generation X. A legend hiding in plain sight. Richie Valens, in every intersectional sense of this word, was being seen. What is your name? I am Will. Thank you for participating. Will, you ready for your question? Bring it on. Here we go. What artist scored the Hot 100's first ever posthumous number one hit in 1968? A Otis Redding B Keith Moon C Janis Joplin or D Jimi Hendrix.
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Jack Hamilton
Don't think it's B Keith Moon so I'm down between A C and D.
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Chris Melanphy
A Otis Redding that is correct. Nicely done.
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Audience/Contestants
What you want if you got it.
- [17:44]
Chris Melanphy
Now Otis Redding first topped the Hot 100 as a songwriter while he was still alive. That happened when this classic song Respect was famously turned into a feminist anthem by Aretha Franklin. Her version of Redding's song hit number one in the summer of 67. But prior to his passing, Redding had gotten no higher on the Hot 100 than number 21 with his 1965 Otis Blue classic I've Been Loving you Too Long.
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Audience/Contestants
I've been loving you.
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Chris Melanphy
And even after his legendary Monterey Pop Festival performance in the summer of 1967, all of Redding's singles on Stax Records and sister label.
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Volt fell well short of the top.
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20 on the pop chart. But that same summer is when Otis began writing the song that would change everything. Sitting on the Dock of the Bay was not only Redding's sole number one as an artist on both the Hot 100 and the R and B chart, it was his only top 20 pop hit and remains his perennial radio standard. But Redding would not live to see its chart topping success. Two days after recording the song in December 1967 with co writer and guitarist Steve Cropper, Redding's twin engine plane crashed near Madison, Wisconsin three months later. For the week ending March 16, 1960, 1968, Dock of the Bay was at number one, the first posthumous chart topper in Hot 100 history. To talk about this artist and song, I'd now like to bring up the first of my esteemed guests.
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Emily J. Lordy is the author of.
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Black Iconic Women Singers and African American literature and the 33 and a third series book, Donny Hathaway Live. Her music and book reviews have appeared on such sites as the New Yorker, the Atlantic, our own Slate, the Root, the Fader, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is an Associate professor of English at UMass Amherst. Would you please help me welcome Emily Lordy.
- [20:17]
So, Emily, you've written about Otis Redding before. Most specifically a wonderful Atlantic piece about 1966's Try a Little Tenderness in which you position that song very persuasively as a civil rights era song of resistance. Yet Dock of the Bay is almost the opposite of that. A deliberate attempt by Redding to cross over and very different from his prior work on Stax and Volt. Can you talk about where Redding was at in 1967 and what inspired him to write this song?
- [20:42]
Emily J. Lordy
Sure. So in 1967, I think we see Otis both at the height of his powers and also very hard at work. So I think of 67 for him as almost what you often refer to on the show as the imperial period. Right. That he's on the verge or on the brink of that. That moment of incredible creative explosion and experimentation where an artist can kind of do anything and his fans will go with him. Doc of the Bay is a good example of that. It does show him experimenting with a slightly different kind of aesthetic and a sparer kind of more folksy aesthetic. He's drawing on influences like Dylan and the Beatles at that time, but, you know, he's come off of and has gained confidence from this incredibly successful, first of all European tour that he does earlier the previous year, right, with the Stax Review. And then also, of course, his famous, just, you know, incredible performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, as you've noted. And so, you know, he's working really hard and that, you know, that hard driving, kind of gruff sounding soul that we hear and respect satisfaction. Try A Little Tenderness. You know, his really, like, show stopping, Bring down the House closing song of his live sets. Try a Little Tenderness has taken its toll on his voice. And so he needs to get surgery on his vocal cords. And so he does. He has to rest, rest his voice, rest his body for a solid five weeks, at the end of which he goes into the studio and records Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, which is a song that he had started earlier when he had been in San Francisco for the Monterey Pop Festival. So I see this as being about, you know, Otis at work. And in some ways I do see it as a song of social commentary that's in some ways about day laborers. You know, if we think about the speaker of the song not just as Otis Redding himself, but as this kind of Persona of somebody who's left his home in Georgia, headed to the Frisco Bay. He's sitting there, you know, 2,000 miles from home. Like, what has brought him out here, right? If not the promise of work, and as I see it, kind of, you know, work on. On the docks, which might not be available at this particular point. So what is there to do? What form of resistance do you have, except in some cases, just sit there and rest and to think. And so I see this as Otis resting himself, resting his voice, and just in that way actually creating a very different kind of artistic statement.
- [23:18]
Chris Melanphy
When you hear Doc of the Bay today, where do you place it in the legacy of Otis Redding?
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Emily J. Lordy
Well, it's interesting to me because I think this is often seen and music critics talk about this song as being this authentic expression of Otis Redding's true self. He's baring his soul, he's really upset or he's sad. And, you know, people also see it as a premonition of his death, that it's a prediction, right, of the fact that he is about to die really only a couple weeks after recording the song. But I see it in some ways as, yes, it's about Otis, as I said, it's about his work, his life as a working musician.
- [23:54]
Chris Melanphy
Right.
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Emily J. Lordy
And the way in which musicians are laborers. They are itinerant laborers, right? They're going where the work is, they're going out on tour. And so I see it as a kind of social commentary about what is required, particularly of black artists in an industry that is often built on black labor. And I see it that way in part because Otis commented on that, on the kind of conditions of black workers both on and off stage. So there's a recording that he does at the Whiskey a Go Go in Hollywood in 66, where in the midst of this really intense kind of hard driving set of hits, he stops and he says to the audience, do you see how hard we have to work to eat? You see how hard we have to work? He also apparently proposed the idea of an all black entertainers union to James Brown. And he said we should band together. Yeah, to stop getting exploited by these white promoters and managers and all the people in the industry. James Brown refused to join forces with him for his own complicated reasons. But the point is that that was Otis's dream, you know, that was one of his dreams. He wanted to own his own label, he wanted to produce his own stuff, he wanted to be his own boss. He wanted to stop being in a position where as the person sings, as the speaker sings in the song, he's got 10 people telling him what to do, right? And so I see sitting on the dock of the bay, as in some ways, you know, about that, resisting that, saying, if I can't do anything else, at least I can rest for a minute, just sit here and think and not be at everybody else's beck and call. And finally, I'll just say too, that for that reason, we can see Otis as working in this kind of mode of introspective soul. So we tend to think about soul as this big, spectacular, bombastic performance of the charismatic, especially the male figure, right? Sam and Dave's, you know, and Soul man and Hold On, I'm Coming and these kind of big songs, say It Loud on Black and I'm Proud. But, you know, there's also this quieter, more introspective soul aesthetic that Otis Redding is embodying here. This moment where you're just kind of turning inward, you're having a soul to soul conversation with yourself, figuring out kind of what you need to do to go forward. And in that way, we can see Otis as a kind of forerunner to. To the kind of different soul aesthetic that's going to emerge in the late 60s and 70s, like in Al Green and Isaac Hayes and Minnie Ripperton. He's an unlikely kind of precedent in some ways. To that.
- [26:20]
Chris Melanphy
That's excellent. Thank you so much.
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Emily J. Lordy
You're welcome.
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Chris Melanphy
That was exactly what we need. Can I have contestant number three. 04? Hello. What is your name? Sari. Thank you so much for joining us. Are you ready for your question?
- [26:52]
Emily J. Lordy
Sure.
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Chris Melanphy
All right, here we go. What early 70s smash became the second ever posthumous number one hit? And a, the Carpenters superstar, B, Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle, C, Elvis Presley, Burning Love, or D, Janis Joplin, me and Bobby McGee. So I have absolutely no idea on.
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Holly George Warren
This complete stab in the dark.
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Chris Melanphy
I'm gonna go with D, Janis Joplin, me and Bobby Biggie. That is correct. Very nicely done. But I train all of my tomorrows.
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Holly George Warren
For one single yesterday to be Holding Bobby's Body.
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Chris Melanphy
Written by Kris Kristofferson in 1969, based on a suggested title by Monument Records founder Fred Foster, me and Bobby McGee was not penned for Joplin. In fact, by the time she got to it in late 1970, it had already been, in two short years, a country hit for Roger Miller, a Canadian hit for Gordon Lightfoot, and an album cut for everyone from Kenny Rogers and the first edition to the Statler Brothers. Kristofferson's own 1970 version, later used in the Monty Hellman road movie Two Lane Blacktop, is also memorable.
- [28:06]
Audience/Contestants
Freedom's just another word Fun Nothing left to lose Nothing ain't worth nothing but.
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Chris Melanphy
But Joplin's chart topping 1971 smash has basically overshadowed all other virtues. To talk about this indelible recording, I'm very fortunate to have Janice's biographer as my guest. Holly George Warren, in addition to writing her Life and music, coming this fall on Simon and Schuster, is also the author of a dozen plus other books. Holly teaches at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Would you please help me give a warm welcome to Holly George Warren. So I read an interview with Fred Foster where he said he originally couldn't picture Janis Joplin, a hard rocker, doing Bobby McGee, which at root he heard as a tender country song. How did she wind up with it? And besides obviously the female perspective, what did Janice bring to the song?
- [29:10]
Holly George Warren
Well, basically, her doing that song was a return to her roots. Like Kris Kristofferson, she was a native of Texas and she started out performing, doing hillbilly songs, blues, you know, country, in Austin, Texas, when she was a student at UT in 1962. And she had become known, yes, as a. She was a screamer. A Piece of My Heart, which was actually an R and B song by Irma Franklin Sung by Erma Franklin. You know, she became known as this screaming, you know, over the top, raw, emotive singer. But by the time she started recording the songs for Pearl, she was learning to use more restraint in her vocals. Now, the way she got that song, it's a crazy story, but her manager, of course, was famous Albert Grossman, also Bob Dylan's manager, and also the manager of Gordon Lightfoot. Now, this amazing character in rock and roll history, Bob Neuwirth, who was known for, you know, the aide de camp of Bob Dylan, had become that same role for Janis. He was hanging out in the office one day with Grossman. Gordon Lightfoot's in there playing guitar and plays me and Bobby McGee, and Bob Neuwirth's like, what is that song? I gotta learn that song. I gotta show the song to Janice. He had dinner that night with Janice. They'd already made a date. She always stayed at the Chelsea Hotel. And he went to meet her at the hotel, played her this song that he had just learned from Gordon Lightfoot. And she's like, oh, my God, I love that song. And she immediately. She had a Gibson hummingbird guitar and learned to play the song. And she ended up playing it for the first time, actually, this was in 1969. She was still in the Cosmic Blues Band at that time. After she left Big Brother and the Holding Company, she ended up playing it for the first time in Nashville at the fairgrounds there, and the crowd went nuts. And, you know, of course, she introduced it by this guy, Kris Kristofferson. Y' all might not know him, but he's gonna be big. She did it again in Austin, Texas, and then she finally got to meet Kris Kristofferson. Whoo. That was. She liked him a lot.
- [31:15]
Chris Melanphy
I think a lot of people liked Kris Kristofferson at that time.
- [31:18]
Holly George Warren
Yeah. But she really. She got the spirit of that song. She really got it. And she used a different kind of Janice voice. Janice had a lot of voices.
- [31:28]
Chris Melanphy
So given that you have just finished a biography of Janice. Thanks for the advance copy, by the way. I'm so excited, because it's terrific.
- [31:34]
Karen Thompson
Thank you.
- [31:34]
Chris Melanphy
How do you feel? Janice's biggest hit reflects her life. I mean, have too many people reduced Janis to me and Bobby McGee, or does it reflect her artistry and her voice?
- [31:44]
Holly George Warren
It definitely shows how she could do so many different things with her voice. With the lyrics, though, I mean, it really sometimes just gives me a chill. She really did hitchhike from Austin, Texas, with a guy named chet helms. In 1963, way before she joined Big Brother in the holding company, she went out to San Francisco for the first time to try to make it as a blues singer playing in coffee houses. And she first met Jerry Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen then at that period, and she really did snuggle with, you know, Chet, and they got, you know, rides picked up by truckers and stuff like that. So she really did live the words to that song. And they were seeking freedom. Texas was very repressive then. She grew up in a segregated town, Port Arthur, Texas, that she was, you know, couldn't handle living there. And she loved San Francisco for the freedom that it offered her.
- [32:39]
Chris Melanphy
So when you hear me and Bobby McGee on the radio to this day, I mean, given now your kind of close relationship to Janice, does it fill you with a certain nostalgia, a certain affection? What enters your mind when you hear it?
- [32:52]
Holly George Warren
I just turn it up, baby. And luckily for me, I live in Woodstock, New York, so my station, WDST plays a lot of Janis Joplin. So I'll hear a piece of my heart blasted. I'll hear her doing with her the Cosmic Blues Band doing maybe the Chantel song that she loved as a young girl growing up in Texas. And the way she did that song. You know, a couple of other posthumous, you know, semi hits, they did chart. Get it while you can now. That one I tear up because those words do seem very prescient for what sadly happened, actually, before she finished recording all the tracks for Pearl is when she accidentally overdosed on heroin and died.
- [33:35]
Chris Melanphy
Holly, I can't thank you enough. This is great. Really appreciate it.
- [33:37]
Holly George Warren
Thanks for having me.
- [33:39]
Emily J. Lordy
Oh, Lord, don't you buy me a Mercedes Benz My friends all drive Porsches I must make amends Worked hard all my lifetime no help from my friends so, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
- [34:03]
Chris Melanphy
Oh, Lord Moving on, question four. Do I have contestant number four in the audience?
- [34:14]
Hello.
- [34:15]
Karen Thompson
Hi.
- [34:16]
Chris Melanphy
And what is your name? My name is Chris.
- [34:18]
Oh, love that name.
- [34:20]
Easy to remember. Chris, are you ready for question four?
- [34:24]
Emily J. Lordy
Sure.
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Chris Melanphy
All right, here we go. What John Lennon hit already in the top 10 in early December 1980, soared to number one after his murder. A, just like Starting Over. B, Woman C, watching the wheels or D, nobody Told me. Wow.
- [34:41]
Charles R. Cross
I think everyone knows this one, but I don't.
- [34:45]
Jack Hamilton
Let's go, woman.
- [34:48]
Chris Melanphy
I'm sorry, that is incorrect. The correct answer was A. Just like Starting Over. But thank you, Chris, for participating.
- [34:54]
Audience/Contestants
Just like Starting over.
- [35:03]
Chris Melanphy
The singles From John Lennon's 1980 album Double Fantasy, Starting Over, Woman and Watching the Wheels are among the most famous posthumous hits ever. Given that Lennon's death remains the most media covered and convulsive rock death of all time, one of these hits, Woman, Lennon's homage to collaborator and wife Yoko Ono, remains his adult contemporary radio standard to this day day. But as this trivia question implies, some may forget that the album's leadoff single was already shaping up as a pretty major hit even before the former Beatles tragic death on December 8, 1980 at the hand of assassin Mark David Chapman. Just like Starting over was a cheeky homage to the rock and roll of Lennon's youth. With John on the verses doing his best Elvis impersonation. Starting over was already number six before Lennon's murder and rising into the top.
- [36:28]
Five the week he was killed.
- [36:30]
We will never know how well it would have done in a parallel universe where Lennon was not taken away from us at age 40. But as the lead off track to a very gentle, reflective album that would soon become Lennon's epitaph, the ironically titled Starting over holds a singular place in rock history. To talk about this Lennon hit, I'd like to bring on as my next guest, Jack Hamilton. Jack teaches in the Departments of American Studies and Media Studies at the University of Virginia. He is also my colleague at Slate, where he writes about pop, rock and hip hop music, sports and other areas of culture. Jack's essential first book, Just Around Midnight, Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination, was published to great acclaim in the fall of 2016. Would you please help me welcome my colleague and good friend Jack Hamilton.
- [37:29]
So Jack, you've written extensively about rock and roll and its tropes and this hit is all trope. A song that wants to sound like the 1950s and it's coming out in 1980 at the start of the post disco backlash. How much of this was Lennon just feeling nostalgic, do you think? And how much of this was him channeling the culture to score a comeback hit?
- [37:49]
Jack Hamilton
That's a great question and thanks for having me, Chris. I really think it's mostly nostalgia. Lennon was a real, was a hardcore nostalgist and had been for really his whole career in a lot of ways. The album, the solo album that he made prior to Double Fantasy, which isn't even a solo album because it's co credited to him and Yoko really, but was Rock and Roll, which came out in 1975, which was an album of covers and you know, covers of rock and roll songs from the 50s and early 60s, basically and if you go back and read interviews with him, you know, particularly the very famous 1970 Rolling Stone, Lennon remembers interviews. You know, he talks about like, you know, rock and roll's just like peaked with whole lot of shaking going on. And we're all trying to get back to that. Even when he's talking about the Beatles, he says, like, oh, you know, we were at our best before we even started recording. You know, that was like, we wanted to get back to that. So definitely that nostalgia thing. Another thing, like in terms of the anti disco thing, Lennon, by his own account, had been really kind of checked out of music for the last five years. I mean, again, it had been five years since he'd made his last album. He'd been spending a lot of time in, you know, basically as a house husband raising Sean. And he gave an interview to Playboy, right. Basically right before his death, a very lengthy interview to David Sheff. And he says that he's. All he's been listening to is muzak and classical music. And I don't really know if that's totally true, but like, I don't think that he was really plugged in enough to be sort of like calculatedly tapping the zeitgeist to be like, oh, this is what's going to sell. And lastly, I would just say that I'm personally maybe more of a. I'm much more of a Paul guy than a John guy, but like, we're out there tapping into the zeitgeist kind of cynically to make that hit. That's a Paul move.
- [39:49]
Chris Melanphy
And you say that as a devoted Paul fan.
- [39:51]
Jack Hamilton
Yeah, totally. I mean, that's a Paul move, not a joke John move.
- [39:54]
Chris Melanphy
Fair enough. So it has always seemed difficult to me to take this single and album out of their tragic context and assess them properly. I mean, opinion on them swung widely both back then and in the decades that followed, almost 40 years later. Now, where do you think Starting over and Double Fantasy sit in Lennon's oeuvre? Can we finally just regard them as music?
- [40:16]
Jack Hamilton
No, I think. I mean, I think it's always gonna be kind of impossible to separate them from their context. The great critic Simon Frith, shortly after Lennon's death, wrote an obituary for him or sort of a eulogy in New York Rocker magazine. And Frith has this amazing line where he says that John Lennon was the only rock singer who could sing the word we convincingly. Which, I mean, it's just an incredible thing to say. And it's just like. And just like starting over is a we song, you know, and there's an aspect of it that I think resonated with his fans where obviously he's singing it presumably to Yoko. You know, it's a love song, but it's got that, you know, the word we, I think is in its opening lines or that sort of first person plural construction. And there's this way that this song kind of registers as him. Like, you know, you can almost hear it registering with his fans. It's sort of like there's an intimacy to it. And it's also just, I mean, I don't know, the circumstances around John Lennon's death are just so sad. And there's something about Double Fantasy when it came out, it was. When it first came out, came out, it was kind of received, had got kind of mixed reception and a lot of critics kind of knocked it for being, you know, it's like, oh, it's just this middle aged guy talking about sort of being happy and kind of bored, which was something that it got knocked for at the time. And like, in retrospect, is one of the most charming aspects of the album. You know, I mean, I think of certainly Watching the Wheels, I think is actually an even better song than this one. Significantly better. Partly because it's so. It's about such an interesting topic, which is basically being middle aged, you know, and being this sort of like, I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round and it's kind of fun, you know. And like everyone thinks I'm crazy because I'm not really doing anything, but you know, this is what I'm choosing to do. And that's like an interesting thing to write a song about. Yeah. So, I mean, I really think that, yeah, it's really difficult to sort. And it's also just such a moving document of his relationship with Yoko and his sort of love, their love for each other and thinking about Yoko as someone who just put up with so much abuse from his fans and sort of rock fans, you know, a lot of which was very sexist and racist. And a lot of it was just sort of fans being kind of obnoxiously proprietary over this idol of theirs, you know, this sort of equal part album, this double album that's sort of half his and half hers. And just the way that it's just this really expression of a really romantic but also very adult type of love and devotion is just. It's really special and, you know, it's not a. I don't think it's a perfect album by any means. And there's, you know, but at the same time, you know, like, if you want to ding it for like, it's. I personally don't think it's super well produced. It definitely sounds like an album that's made by someone who hasn't made music in five years.
- [43:04]
Chris Melanphy
But.
- [43:05]
Jack Hamilton
But that said, I mean, I feel like a jerk for saying that.
- [43:10]
Chris Melanphy
I think that was everybody's feeling too.
- [43:11]
Jack Hamilton
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just sort of. It's really hard to separate it from the context. I think it always will be. It would be impossible to write a review of this album that doesn't reckon with the fact that he dies weeks after it comes out.
- [43:25]
Chris Melanphy
Jack, thank you so much. That was extremely helpful.
- [43:28]
Audience/Contestants
I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and run I really love to watch them roll no longer riding on America.
- [43:57]
Emily J. Lordy
Hello.
- [43:57]
Chris Melanphy
Hi. And what is your name?
- [43:59]
Oliver Wong
Kerry.
- [44:00]
Chris Melanphy
Kerry, thank you so much for joining us.
- [44:02]
Audience/Contestants
Thank you.
- [44:02]
Chris Melanphy
Are you ready for question five?
- [44:03]
Holly George Warren
I am.
- [44:04]
Chris Melanphy
All right. How long after the death of Freddie Mercury did the movie Wayne's World debut in movie theaters? A, less than two weeks, B, less than three months, C, more than a year, Or D, more than two years?
- [44:21]
Emily J. Lordy
I think I'm gonna go with C.
- [44:23]
Chris Melanphy
More than a year. I'm sorry, the correct answer was B, less than three months. But thank you so much for participating. To be exact, it was 82 days between November 24, 1991 when Freddie Mercury died of bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS and Valentine's Day 1992 when Wayne's World opened. This story I'm about to tell is not captured in the recent Queen biopic, also called Bohemian Rhapsody, which ends in 1985, six years before Mercury's death. Of course, a lot of things about the band were not captured in that blockbuster now Oscar winning film. But why quibble? It's such a true to life picture. Other than the fact that Queen weren't broken up prior to Live Aid, Freddie's solo album didn't upset the band. Fat Bottom Girls didn't come out in 1974. John Deacon wasn't part of the original. We Will Rock youk was released in 1977 when Freddie had no mustache, Freddie met his partner Jim Hutton at a club and Freddie didn't reveal his HIV status in 1985. It's a perfectly entertaining movie. This is popcon, we care about the details here. The film ends well before the improbable second act of the song Bohemian Rhapsody in Wayne's World. Although it is alluded to by the Casting of Mike Myers in a small cameo as Ray Foster, a record executive who also did not exist. But the omission of the song's 1992 comeback is a bit of a pity, because as true stories about Queen go, Bohemian's second act is one of the best. In early 1991, before anyone outside of Queen's inner circle knew Freddie was at death's door, Paramount Pictures greenlit a movie based on Wayne's World, a series of wildly successful Saturday Night Live sketches depicting depicting Wayne and his buddy Garth on a cable access TV show. Lead actor Mike Myers had always planned for his Aurora, Illinois dude bro character Wayne Campbell to headbang to Bohemian Rhapsody. The shooting of the film was reportedly and infamously tense, with Myers at one point even threatening to walk if Rhapsody could not be cleared for use in the now famous car scene.
- [46:43]
Audience/Contestants
I think we'll go with a little Bohemian Rhapsody, gentlemen.
- [46:46]
Jack Hamilton
Good call.
- [46:54]
Audience/Contestants
I see a little silhouette of a man.
- [47:07]
Chris Melanphy
When the members of Queen were approached by the Wayne's World producers for clearance of the song, guitarist Brian May brought the video clip that they furnished on of the headbanging scene to lead singer and Bohemian songwriter Freddie Mercury. The ailing Mercury was reportedly charmed and buoyed by the clip, which he felt captured the comic manic spirit of the original song. He approved the clearance for the film. In essence, Mercury, while still alive, was about to not only give a second win commercially to his most famous composition, he was writing his own epitaph. As I noted in our Hit Parade episode about the history of the UK Christmas number one competition, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was a massive British hit just before Christmas 1975. In its original release, it topped the UK chart for nine weeks, setting a record at the time as the biggest selling British single ever. It would return to number one at Christmas 1991, just after Mercury's death for another five weeks. The second UK run was a bit smaller, but then the first was so massive to begin with. But here in America, the story was the only opposite. Bohemian Rhapsody was a bigger hit the second time, arguably the biggest posthumous re release in Hot 100 history. You see, in the mid-1970s, Queen were slower to break in the States. It took until mid-1975, more than a year after their UK breakthrough, for Queen to even make the US top 40 with Killer Queen.
- [48:32]
Audience/Contestants
Killer Queen.
- [48:42]
Chris Melanphy
One year after that, in April 1976, Bohemian Rhapsody was Queen's top 10 US breakthrough. Casey Kasem counted it down.
- [48:52]
Audience/Contestants
American top 40.
- [48:54]
Charles Hughes
First time in the top 10 for.
- [48:56]
Chris Melanphy
Queen from England at number nine. This is Bohemian Rhapsody.
- [48:59]
Audience/Contestants
Is this the real life? Is this just.
- [49:04]
Chris Melanphy
Number nine was as far as Bohemian got in that 1976 run. But 15 years later, the 12 punch of Mercury's November 91 death. A gut punch, you might call that. And the more joyous February 92 release of Wayne's World, now an unplanned tribute to Mercury, would make Bohemian bigger than ever. However accidental all of this was, Queen's label and promotional team did take full advantage of the coincidence, and MTV played a key role. The original 1975 music video for Bohemian Rhapsody was innovative for its time and six years ahead of the official launch of music television. After Mercury's death, MTV put the old 75 clip back into circulation. Then, in the winter of 92, Queen's American label, Hollywood Records, furnished a new version of the video that juxtaposed scenes from Wayne's World with mournful, worshipful shots of the now deceased Mercury. With MTV power rotating both videos, Queen re entered the Hot 100 in March 1992, one month after the movie hit theaters and 16 years after the song's first Hot 100 run. Seven weeks later, Bohemian Rhapsody reached a new peak of number two on the Hot 100. Sandwiched between the number one jump by Kris Kross and the former number one, Save the Best For Last by Vanessa Williams. The Wayne's World soundtrack topped the album chart in May 1992, powered by Queen's classic single. Speaking of classic, Queen, a month later, a compilation by that title was reach the top five. In short, six months after Freddie Mercury's death. Aggregating all of this chart activity, the hottest band in Billboard in The spring of 92 was Queen. Was this the real life? Was it just fantasy? Never one to shy away from the limelight, Mercury would have been probably. All right, we're going to move on now to question six. Can I have contestant number six?
- [51:20]
Hi there.
- [51:22]
Emily J. Lordy
Hi.
- [51:23]
Chris Melanphy
What is your name? I'm Paul. Paul, thank you so much for the participating. Are you ready for your question?
- [51:27]
Oliver Wong
I think so.
- [51:28]
Chris Melanphy
All right, here we go. A decade after the death of Karen Carpenter, which 90s alt rock act scored a top 30 modern rock hit with a cover of a Carpenter's single? A, the Cranberries, B Cheryl Crow, C4 non blondes or D Sonic Youth.
- [51:50]
Oliver Wong
I'm gonna say Sheryl Crow.
- [51:51]
Chris Melanphy
B. I'm sorry, the correct answer is D, Sonic Youth.
- [51:59]
Audience/Contestants
Don't you remember you told me about the baby? You said you'd be coming back this way again. Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby oh, Baby, I love you.
- [52:21]
Chris Melanphy
Written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell. Superstar has been recorded many times, but no version was a bigger hit than the version by superstar sister brother duo the Carpenters, whose deathless version reached number two in the fall of 1971.
- [52:37]
Audience/Contestants
Don't you remember you told me you love me baby.
- [52:46]
Chris Melanphy
23 years later, in the fall of 1994, the Carpenters were the subject of a quirky but loving tribute album, if I Were a Carpenter. The album served as Generation X's posthumous tribute to Karen Carpenter, who had died more than a decade earlier in 1983 from heart failure associated with anorexia nervosa. The album offered affectionate covers from all of the artists I cited in that trivia question, plus American Music Club, Shonen Knife and Betty Savir, among others. Karen Carpenter is also the subject of a brand new book from my next guest, whom I am honored to bring up now. Karen Thompson is the author of why Karen Carpenter Matters. I was lucky enough to see an advanced copy and it is a powerful and moving book. She is also the author of Queer Suburban Imaginaries, a professor at USC, and co editor of the award winning book series Post Millennial Pop. You can also hear Karen talk about the arts, entertainment and popular culture on the delightful weekly maximum fun podcast Pop Rocket. Would you please help me give a warm welcome to my dear friend and mutually proclaimed 80s girlfriend, Karen Thompson? I want to focus our discussion on the carpenter's 90s rehabilitation because unlike the other acts we're discussing today, the Carpenter scored all their big hits when Karen was still alive. This tribute album was sort of Karen Carpenter's posthumous moment. But I think you and I, as Gen Xers who appreciated Karen and Richard's music the first time, both have mixed feelings about this hipster reevaluation. So how did you feel about if I Were a Carpenter in 1994 and how do you feel about it now?
- [54:27]
Karen Thompson
In the historical parlance of homosexuality, of which I very deeply identify from the 19th and 20th century, there is this notion called a beard. And if I were a Carpenter was the sonic beard. To my shame about like loving the carpenters in the 90s when they couldn't be loved openly for a period of time. And so once, like all these amazing bands who were accepted and loved in that period, adored them and made these covers, I felt completely safe and cloaked in, in like my shame around the Carpenters from that album. So that. That's what I have to say about that.
- [55:13]
Chris Melanphy
So has it aged well? I mean, did you. Did you like it better then, do you like it better now?
- [55:17]
Karen Thompson
Well, I have to say, like, you know, I enjoyed the album then. I felt it was a great cover. Cover of covers. Right. So it's like. It's an album of covers that, like, made so many identifications possible. Because in the 90s, I think that we were all searching for different versions of authenticity and, you know, however we want to frame that historically or whatnot. Like, once that album came out and there were these kind of dour reassessments of these Carpenter's songs. Sonic Youth's cover being of Superstar being one of them, you know, you had to, like, really kind of rethink. Okay, well, it's much deeper than that. Frothy A and M studio, big, like, horn sounds and great arrangements situation things. But in the end, like, I fundamentally found the tracks on if I Were A Carpenter. The ones that I found most salient to me were the ones that were closest to the spirit of what Karen and Richard did in the original. And so, sorry, folks, the Sonic Youth version of Superstar, eh, I'm not into it. And I much prefer something like Betty Sir Vert's for All we know.
- [56:35]
Chris Melanphy
That's a good one.
- [56:36]
Yeah.
- [56:36]
Karen Thompson
Or even the Cranberries. God Bless you, Dolores O'Reardon. Yeah, her version of Close to youo, their version of Close to youo was much closer to my spiritual affiliation.
- [56:49]
Chris Melanphy
A quarter century after if I Were A Carpenter, and especially after writing this book, where would you locate her and their legacy?
- [56:57]
Karen Thompson
I think it's about the reassessment of our own relationships to music, broadly. I mean, it's a way bigger thing than just saying, oh, people like them, people don't like them. But I think that, like, the way we assess acts like the Carpenters, if not explicitly, the Carpenters says as much about our desires for how we feel we relate to music, how much we invest our own levels of coolness or acceptance around who we like, who we proclaim we like. Despite the fact that I argue why Karen Carpenter matters, in the end, it's like the legacy of their music is about the stubborn attachment that we all have to this music that moved us, that made us feel a certain way, but that we disavow because of various reasons. And it doesn't just apply to them as artists, but to others who we disavow. I just want to, and I hope that we don't need an album like if I Were A Carpenter to validate the loves that we have around popular music, around the sentimental attachments that we feel when we are coming of age. And that, Karen Carpenter as an example, can just like allow us to, I don't know, feel like that. That joy, that attachment, that pleasure in the voice that gives us the things that we feel and love.
- [58:18]
Chris Melanphy
Well, I certainly co sign all of that. Karen, thank you so much for joining.
- [58:21]
Karen Thompson
Thank you so much. 80s boyfriend.
- [58:30]
Audience/Contestants
Talk about love. How about it makes life complete. You can talk all you want, make.
- [58:37]
Holly George Warren
It sound good and sweet.
- [58:42]
Chris Melanphy
Can I get the contestant for question seven? Hello.
- [58:52]
Karen Thompson
Hello.
- [58:53]
Chris Melanphy
What is your name? My name's Aaron. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us here tonight. Are you ready for your question?
- [59:00]
Emily J. Lordy
Yes.
- [59:01]
Chris Melanphy
All right. On Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York, Kurt Cobain played three covers backed by artists who originally wrote and performed them. Which of these was not one of them? A, the man who Sold the World. B, Plateau C, O Me or D, Lake of Fire.
- [59:20]
Emily J. Lordy
Oh, good lord. I'm gonna have to admit I've never seen the MTV Unplugged Nirvana. That's a bad thing. I know.
- [59:33]
Chris Melanphy
No, no shade.
- [59:36]
Emily J. Lordy
But I'm gonna. I'm Canadian. Come on. I'm gonna say D, Lake of Fire.
- [59:43]
Chris Melanphy
I'm sorry. The correct answer was A, the Man who Sold the World. But thank you so much for participating.
- [59:48]
Audience/Contestants
On two Face to Face.
- [60:00]
Chris Melanphy
The key to this question is knowing whom Kurt Cobain had on stage with him the night of the MTV Unplugged concert. Kurt and Chris Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets Cobain chose to cover three of their songs, Plateau, O Me and Lake of fire from their 1984 psychedelic cowpunk album Meet Puppets 2. Cobain did not have on stage with him that night David Bowie, whose Man who Sold the World, Nirvana performed earlier last fall. When I asked Charles Hughes, organizer of the POP Conference, if this year's theme of music, death and afterlife, had been chosen specifically. Specifically because Popcon would fall immediately after the 25th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. He told me it was just an uncanny coincidence. When I got over my chills, I realized we would have to commemorate what I, and many critics, feel is rock's most famous self directed funeral. Recorded live in November 1993 and rebroadcast practically on a loop on MTV in the days after Fans learned on April 8, 1994, of Cobain's suicide, Nirvana's MTV Unplugged was a unique, fully conceived swan song. I know I am not the only Gen Xer who assuaged his grief re watching this performance when it was released as the album MTV Unplugged in New York later that year, it not only debuted at number one on the album chart, typical for Nirvana after their breakthrough, it was ultimately certified five times platinum, on a par with their studio album In Utero, and second only to the totemic 10 times platform platinum. Nevermind. Given the timing of our show tonight, I am especially fortunate to have as my guest Charles R. Cross, who has written nine books, including the Great Heavier Than the biography of Kurt Cobain, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2002 ASCAP Award for outstanding biography. He is also the author of Room Full of the biography of Jimi Hendrix, and was the co author with Ann and Nancy Wilson of Kicking and A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock and Roll. Would you please welcome Charles R. Cross. One of my favorite anecdotes about Unplugged from your book was the MTV producer who asked Cobain whether the black candles and stargazer lilies he requested for the stage were you mean like a funeral? And Cobain responded that that was exactly what he wanted. In the quarter century since this event, have you come to any conclusions about Kurt's own self awareness that night? In other words, did he at some level know he was stage directing his own memorial service?
- [62:37]
Charles R. Cross
In some ways I don't think he did. I mean, remember Kurt dies April 5, 1994 and he had had near death incidences throughout his life. There are at least 10 that family members talked about and there's an overdose in March in Rome. But I think there was the sense that he knew he was coming to the end of his addiction, that that sort of meaninglessness of what that life was at that point. I think he felt at the end of the run it was the end of Nirvana. That's one of the things that people do not talk about. Nirvana was basically broken up at the point Kurt died. In many ways Kurt wanted to do something different. But you know, Nirvana as it had been, the punk rock shouting. Kurt was done with that.
- [63:26]
Chris Melanphy
Opinions about this album as an album are pretty uniformly positive. But I've heard some call it the easiest way into Nirvana and then conversely, I've heard it as an album that captures their influences and Kurt's quirks. Where do you think it falls in Nirvana's body of work? And all these years later, what is its legacy?
- [63:43]
Charles R. Cross
Well, its legacy is that it is the first place many people discover Nirvana. And your earlier quiz taker. I will buy a copy of Unplug for anybody that wants it and if you don't like it, let me know. But It's a guaranteed. Any Nirvana fan or anybody that loves music will just simply love the way they approach these songs. Kurt essentially recrafts Nirvana. He recrafts the idea of punk songwriting in this one 90 minute segment. He kind of takes these songs that we know as these loud screamers and shouters, and he strips them down to sort of, you know, untarnished blues songs, which is what they are at their heart. And in some ways, I think it's a great critical moment because he links modern rock and roll with stuff from the plantation and the ice houses where rock began. Nobody thought that was possible at an Unplugged. To call Nirvana's Unplugged the greatest unplug, that's like the understatement of the century. It's the greatest thing that ever was on mtv.
- [64:47]
Chris Melanphy
Do you have a favorite track on MTV Unplugged? One that kind of encapsulates the album for you?
- [64:52]
Charles R. Cross
I love Something in the Way. I mean, that is a track that. Where do you sleep last night? I love every song on this. It. You can't. You can't miss because you feel the vulnerability of Kurt, like, essentially almost breaking. He is breaking down on stage, and yet you also feel when he looks at you, that you have the eye contact more than any other performance that Nirvana did, you feel you really get Kurt Cobain on stage.
- [65:20]
Chris Melanphy
I'm relying on my memory here, but I remember you also said something interesting about his performance that night of Penny Royal Tea, that it had kind of, I don't know, an ache to it.
- [65:29]
Charles R. Cross
Well, there is this kind of deep heart pain that you can feel in Penny Royalty, a song that Kurt had been working on for quite a while. And that when it finally kind of came together on In Utero, it. It's. It's a monster kind of pop hit. But he takes it unplugged. And you feel when you watch that performance that he's not maybe gonna finish it. And that's the kind of vulnerability that what makes this so special.
- [65:56]
Chris Melanphy
Charles Cross, thank you so much for joining me tonight. I really appreciate it. Is contestant number eight ready to go? And here he comes.
- [66:25]
Hello.
- [66:26]
Hi. What is your name?
- [66:28]
Jack Hamilton
My name is John.
- [66:30]
Chris Melanphy
And are you ready for part?
- [66:33]
Jack Hamilton
I am so ready.
- [66:34]
Chris Melanphy
All right, here we go. All of these 1997 hits feature rapping by the late Notorious B.I.G. but only one opens with him rapping. Which one? A, Been around the World, B, Mo Money Mo Problems, C, Hypnotize, or D, it's all about the Benjamins remix. Well, we know Puffy has to put.
- [66:58]
Jack Hamilton
His fingers on a lot of stuff, right? So we're gonna eliminate some of those. So we're gonna go with C Hypnotize.
- [67:07]
Chris Melanphy
And that is correct. The correct answer is C Hypnotize. Nice job.
- [67:21]
Most rap histories pair Brooklyn born Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious B.I.G. with Tupac Shakur, his West coast counterpart, Slash rival Slash, fellow victim of hip hop's most fatal 90s war. But on the charts, there is a distinction between Biggie and Tupac. Pac scored his Hot 100 chart topper, the double sided hit how do youo Want It? And California Love in the summer of 1996 while he was still alive.
- [67:54]
Audience/Contestants
California party.
- [68:00]
Chris Melanphy
Biggie, on the other hand, never lived to see his name on top of Billboard's flagship charts. Killed in a Los Angeles drive by shooting on March 9, 1997, the Notorious B.I.G. went on to become that year's most omnipresent musical figure. As a ghost, Biggie's prophetically titled Life After Death, his Sean Puff Daddy Combs produced second album topped the Billboard 200 album chart less than three weeks after Big's murder, and it spun off two no. 1 singles, making Biggie the only artist in history to top the hot 100 twice posthumously. As my trivia question implies, Puffy was all over Biggie's singles. Only Hypnotized is credited solely to Big and features no rapping by Puff Daddy. On the summer jam Mo Money Mo Problems, Biggie is the lead artist, but but Puffy and his fellow Bad Boy label rapper Mace do all of the rapping for the first two verses. Biggie doesn't show up until the song is more than 2 minutes old.
- [69:07]
Audience/Contestants
B I G P O PPA no info for the DEA federal agents mad Cause the Flag.
- [69:18]
Chris Melanphy
My final guest tonight will walk us through the these Biggie hits. Oliver Wong is a professor of sociology at California State University, Long beach, and has been writing on music and culture since 1994. He currently co hosts the maximum fun podcast Heat Rocks, which I was delighted to guest on recently. Would you please help me welcome my own west coast counterpart, Oliver Wong?
- [69:50]
Oliver Wong
This is awesome.
- [69:51]
Chris Melanphy
I'm glad you're enjoying it. I know I am. So as I said in my intro, Biggie and Tupac will forever be joined at the hip historically, but the flossy peak Puff Daddy sound of these two hits seems specifically east coast to me. As a West coaster yourself, Oliver, and someone who was paying close attention to movements and rap in the 90s, what was your perception of Biggie at this imperial moment Well, I was thinking about.
- [70:13]
Oliver Wong
This because I think in the years between 94 and 97, really there were no artists that I think no single artists or groups that had an imperial phase beyond the collective of the Wuang Clan because it was such a fervent era. And I just. I'm going to do a deep dive real quick. Is between 90. So 94 is ready to die, 97 is life after death. These are all artists who had debut major label albums during that time besides Biggie, Nas, outkast, Method man, the Roots, Raekwon, Old Dirty Bastard, Jay Z, Ghostface Killer and Missy Elliott. And this doesn't include artists onto their second, third, or even fourth albums like Mop Deep, the Fugees, De La Soul, UGK and Scarface. All of which is to say I don't think Biggie's rise into his imperial phase to me, ever felt inevitable up until the moment that Hypnotized came out. And then of course, his death took it another step. I think what was to me the most intriguing part of that, that lead up is that him and Puffy, I thought, made very smart decisions about how to put Biggie and keep him in the mix without overexposing him. So he was on Total's, it's what's the Total song, Can't you see? He was on Junior mafia's Get Money and Players Anthem. He cameoed on Jay Z's Brooklyn's Finest. And so he was very well poised coming in to Hypnotize. And I think I remember most about when that song first hit, it just opens and you're talking about how he. This is the song that Biggie leads on. That song just opens like a thunderclap. And on a side note, it educated a lot of people that Herb Alba did more than just whipped cream and other delights. And yeah, it was such a monstrous single. And sadly, what took things over the top into the imperial phase, as you put it, was his murder and his death, which I think really sealed everything and made him irresistible and undeniable for the rest of 97.
- [72:00]
Chris Melanphy
So did Mo Money, Mo Problems, which is his other posthumous hit, did that fit feel like a categorically different hit to you, or did it feel like a different side of the same coin?
- [72:07]
Oliver Wong
In a weird way? And it's kind of weird to say for a posthumous hit, it felt almost like a victory lap because at that point, life after death, especially as a double album, was selling buckets. Biggie was everywhere in mass media, even though obviously he was gone and maybe Just because also the topic of more money, more problems, it's about the spoils of success. And so the song itself almost seeps in the fact that like Biggie was the biggest story in 97 for all the wrong reasons.
- [72:35]
Chris Melanphy
Sadly, Life After Death still ranks as one of the biggest selling rap albums of all time, so its commercial prowess is secure. But what do you think Biggie's legacy is in the timeline of hip hop? What is his role in growing rap into the dominant force that it is today?
- [72:51]
Oliver Wong
Well, I'm going to start with a mildly hot take, which is to say that Biggie dying at the top of his fame, but having a very small catalog means that we never had to suffer through him falling off, which I think happened to a lot of his contemporaries who are all vying for greatest of all time rapper status, but their mid late career all had mediocre stuff. So you think of your Jay Z's, your M&Ms, your Nas's, your Lil Waynes, et cetera. We never had to see that happen to Biggie. And I think, I think for that reason those two albums and that 97 year really helped to fix his status in that sense. To answer your question though, the thing that I remember most about Biggie and Tupac is that what took him to the top, besides their lyrical talent, was they were two of the most charismatic rappers that hip hop has ever seen and Biggie in particular. And I think Biggie was even more than Tupac was the consummate crossover artist in terms of being incredibly appealing to mainstream pop listeners without ever losing his reputation amongst the quote unquote, you know, rap fanatics or hardcore hip hop heads. And that it's to such an extent that even 22 years later, anyone vying to be the best rapper alive is always going to be within Biggie's shadow and chasing this ghost and largely, I think, in vain.
- [74:10]
Chris Melanphy
This is excellent. Thank you so much, Oliver. Thank you.
- [74:12]
Oliver Wong
My pleasure.
- [74:23]
Chris Melanphy
Nearing the end of our program, we have one more trivia question and I'd like to bring up contestant number nine. Hi there.
- [74:36]
Holly George Warren
Hello.
- [74:37]
Chris Melanphy
Thanks for joining us. What is your name? I'm Bill. Bill, are you ready for questions? Question number nine? As ready as I'm gonna be. All right, that's the spirit. Which music legend who died in 2016 did not earn a posthumous number one album? A, David Bowie, B, A Tribe Called Quest's Fife Dog, C, Prince or D, George Michael?
- [75:01]
Jack Hamilton
Gosh, that's a tough one.
- [75:02]
Chris Melanphy
I think it's gonna be Fife. Sorry, the correct answer is George Michael D. But thank you very much for participating. You all don't mind. I'm just going to slip into something more comfortable. So this will be our last story, which I will take myself. And I must say it is appropriate that I am telling this not only at the Pop Conference, but in this beautiful space that Mopop calls Sky Church. That's because three years ago this month, I and the popcon organizers put together a loose lunchtime panel to commemorate all of the music luminaries who were dying that year as an entire generation of baby boom rock icons ages into their Twilight years, the 2010s in general has been tough for music fans, but 2016 felt particularly cruel. With the year barely a quarter over and including a few luminaries who'd passed in the final month of of 2015, we'd already lost everyone from David Bowie to Earth, Wind and Fire's Maurice White to Keith Emerson to Natalie Cole to Glenn Frey to Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland to Motorhead's Lemmy to Merle Haggard to Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner to A Tribe Called Quest's Fife. So about a dozen PopCon attendees did our best to wake the dead with a series of mini eulogies of most of these artists. And all of this happened on April 17, 2016. That date is important. If the conference had happened just four days later, we'd have had to absorb the devastating body blow of the untimely passing of Prince on the charts of 2016. Music fans were doing their best to absorb the grief of so many music stars deaths. I already talked earlier tonight about George Michael, whose Christmas 2016 death prompted a boost in his sales, streams and airplay. But no one song or album dominated enough to top the channel charts, especially in the closing days of the holiday season. But the other three artists I mentioned in this trivia question all did top the charts from the great beyond. And touchingly, all three did so in ways that were true to their idiom. Famously, in an almost Cobain like fashion, David Bowie prepared his own epitaph with his final studio album, Blackstar. Infused with themes of mortality and some of the spookiest, most free flow material of his long career, Bowie's 25th and final disc might rank as the most well timed, well coordinated swan song in rock history. As if knowing the album was his last will and testament, Bowie released it on his 69th birthday, then died two days later. On Sunday, January 10, 2016. Tony Visconti, Bowie's longtime collaborator and the producer of Black Star, called it Bowie's parting gift, Blackstar stormed up the charts, debuting at number one on the Billboard album chart and knocking out Adele's blockbuster 25 in the process. Like his first, John Lennon, who in 1980 had a similarly self reflected, oddly well timed new album in stores just in time for his passing, Bowie had given the public a new work by which to focus their grief. Unlike Lennon, who had scored several number one albums both solo and with the Beatles, Blackstar was amazingly the first chart topping US album of Bowie's long career, beating the number three peak of 1976's Station to Station, the number four peak of 1983's let's Dance and the number two peak of the 2013 comeback the Next day. Bowie wasn't the only chart topper of 2016 to die right before a well timed, elegiac final album. Consider Fife, Dog of A Tribe Called Quest. After a nearly two decade hiatus, the rap troupe had quietly reformed only half a year before his death at age 45 after a long fight with diabetes. Fife reportedly didn't believe the sessions that he and his estranged friend and fellow MC Q Tip were recording in secret would ever amount to so much as an ep, much less an album. But Fife recorded enough material in his last months to infuse Quest's final disc with his signature wit and exceptional flow.
- [79:25]
Audience/Contestants
The fog and the smog of the media that logs false narratives of guys that came up up against the odds. We not just nigga rappers with the bars it's kismet that we're cosmic with the stars you asses overlooking street art. Better yet, street smart but you keep us off the chart. Some of the your numbers and your statistician.
- [79:49]
Chris Melanphy
Before his passing, Fife even gave the album its cryptic title. One might call it Abstract We Got It From Here. Thank you for your service. That title seemed even more apt when the album dropped on November 11, 2016, three days after the election of Donald Trump as America's 45th president. One Night later, A Tribe Called Quest delivered a fiery performance on Saturday Night Live, joined by taped rhymes from their deceased brother and a large cloth effigy of Fife on stage. Eight days after that, the Billboard announced that We Got It From Here had become A Tribe Called Quest's first number one album in 20 years, since 1996's Beats, Rhymes and Life. Both Bowie and Fife went into their final studio albums knowing at some level they were not long for this world. It is safe to say Prince, however, did not operate under a similar mindset. He moved through life as if he'd be here forever. The passing of Prince Rogers Nelson was hard for many of us, maybe the hardest musical loss of 2016. Which is saying something in a year when an icon like David bowie dies. On April 21, when news spread of his accidental fentanyl overdose at his Paisley park home and recording studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota, radio stations filled with Prince music the cellos on the otherwise whimsical Raspberry Beret blaring from my stereo that afternoon had never sounded so mournful. He had just issued a pair of new albums, Hit and Run Phase One and Phase Two, the previous fall. Normally, an artist's newest album is the first to benefit from an untimely passing, like Bowie with his two day old Black Star or John Lennon's roughly three week old double fantasy at the time of his death. But Prince's two hit and runs were not quite immediate enough or commercially potent enough to serve as the locus of fans grief in the days just after his passing. Instead, Americans chose to celebrate Prince by consuming, well, a little of everything. Prince died on a Thursday, the last day of Nielsen and Billboard's tracking week. And yet, based on that one day of digital sales, six Prince singles re entered the Hot 100 the following week. And that one day of sales gave Prince his first number one album in a decade, as the compilation the Very Best of Prince topped the Billboard 200 for the first time. Right behind it was Purple Rain, Prince's 1984 magnum opus, back in the top 10 for the first time since 1985, the next week with another seven days of sales. One all six of these classic Prince singles were among the top 30 tracks on the Hot 100, from let's Go Crazy to Little Red Corvette. And on the album chart, Prince held down five of the top seven albums. One classic LP, 1999 actually reached a new all time peak of number seven, two spots higher than it had gotten back in 1983. If Beyonce hadn't picked that week to drop her new chart topper Lemonade, Prince would have had five albums out of the top six. All of this monstrous chart activity would surely have thrilled Prince, who was a fierce competitor to his final days. He was also, rather notoriously, not a fan of streaming or digital music music in general. Which brings me to the final quirk of Prince's posthumous chart rampage. The day he died, very little of his music was on YouTube and essentially none on Spotify or the Apple music streaming service, although his label freed up some of this material on streaming services. In the initial weeks after his passing, Billboard reported that the overwhelming majority of Prince's April and May 2016 chart action was driven by old fashioned sales. I myself recall going to my local Brooklyn bar the night of April 21, just hours after Prince's death, and finding the 20 something bartenders not playing Prince because they couldn't find his music on Spotify. I handed them my iPhone and they connected it behind the bar to play my collection of MP3 files I had ripped from my old compact discs. In short, in the weeks immediately after his death, Prince got his fondest wish. He was not only commanding the charts, something he loved to do his whole life, he was compelling hundreds of thousands of Americans to buy music the old fashioned way. Sure, Tower Records and the Virgin Megastore were long gone by 2016. Maybe some of those print sales were CDs mail ordered on Amazon or even, heaven forbid, $29 MP3 downloads. Maybe only a fraction of those sales were at brick and mortar retailers. A Walmart here, a Best Buy there, maybe even an Urban Outfitters or a rough trade. But in 2016, the late Prince got a bunch of people who hadn't paid retail for music in a very long time to pay a visit to the record store. Perhaps this was Prince's final act of posthumous genius.
- [85:11]
Audience/Contestants
I only want to see you laughing in the purple rain Purple rain, Purple rain.
- [85:23]
Chris Melanphy
I hope you all enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My enormous thanks to everyone here at Mopop for their hospitality and support. Jason Porter, Robert Rutherford, Laura Hennickson, Brian Epps, Anthony Angolora, Silas Stokes, as well as the entire Slate Live team, especially Faith Smith and Kirsten Holtz. Plus a very heartfelt shout out to Pop Conference Organizer in Chief Palmer of nerves Charles Hughes and to show guest, advisor and all around inspiration and powers, my fearless producer is Chris Barube. He's been queuing up songs all night. Let's hear it for him. The Managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas. Our Senior Producer is TJ Raphael, and Gabriel Roth is 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 Gabfest feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're here. It helps other listeners find the show. And please tell your friends thanks for listening. And thanks to all my friends here in Seattle for joining us here tonight. I look forward to Marching the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the wine. I'm Chris Melanfin.
- [86:56]
Audience/Contestants
You? It's time we all reach out. You say you want to lead up but you can't seem to make up your mind don't think you better clothing.