1 Thriller
Michael Jackson
Like Woodstock, Beatlemania, and the birth of rock & roll itself, the creation of the most popular album in history took place amid fits of genius, spasms of second guesses, and bursts of tears. Its first single, ''The Girl Is Mine,'' came out before the rest of Thriller was even finished — and producer Quincy Jones wondered whether Michael Jackson's moon-walking masterpiece had gotten off on the wrong foot. ''If we didn't put the song out first, we might never have put it out at all,'' Jones laughs now. ''If you're singing 'The doggone girl is mine,' you're really living dangerously.'' (Within days of Thriller's eventual release, that doggone duet with Paul McCartney climbed to No. 2, and the hype machine ground into full gear.)
Playing it safe, it seems, was never an option. Just before the Thriller sessions started, Jones and Jackson agreed to slap together a storybook album for the biggest movie of all time — E.T. That left them a mere two and a half months to complete Thriller in time for Christmas. Four weeks into the project, with ''no time to analyze or paralyze,'' Jones decided to chuck four songs — and to replace them with what most people now consider indispensable tracks: ''The Lady in My Life,'' ''PYT (Pretty Young Thing),'' ''Human Nature,'' and ''Beat It.'' Later, while listening to what was supposed to be the final version of the album, Jackson was so disappointed that he started to cry. ''The record company guys were there with their champagne,'' Jones recalls. ''But when they said, 'This is it,' we had to say, 'No, this is not it.'''
After a major reworking, Thriller, true to the B-movie excess of its title track, became a hydra-headed monster, devouring MTV, begetting seven top 10 singles, and, at one point, luring one million buyers a week. But, like all consuming monsters, it eventually turned on its creator, and its otherworldly success has haunted Jackson ever since. No matter. In the video to ''Billie Jean,'' the sidewalk will always light up when touched by his magic shoes.
Albums sold in U.S.: 24 million
Weeks at No. 1: 37
Weeks on Chart: 122
Released: Dec. 1, 1982
2 Their Greatest Hits
Eagles
Don Henley was from Texas, Glenn Frey from Detroit, Randy Meisner from Nebraska, and Bernie Leadon from San Diego by way of Florida. In 1970, they were all in L.A. to get famous.
Producer John Boylan was waiting. ''A lot of people in L.A. were trying to figure out the perfect country-rock sound,'' he says. ''We knew that if we could get the combination right and the songs right, we could have something big.'' Boylan had heard each of them perform in different bands at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, and offered Henley and Frey $200 a week each to back up-and-comer Linda Ronstadt. Five months later, he made Meisner and Leadon a similar offer in time for a crucial Ronstadt gig — at Disneyland.
Convinced that this posse deserved to be a band in their own right, fledgling rock manager David Geffen flew them to London to make a record. ''He figured he would rather have us in England,'' Meisner recalls, ''because if we stayed in L.A. there'd be too many distractions, like partying and stuff.''
Released in 1972, their self-titled debut album produced three mega-singles, including ''Take It Easy,'' establishing the Eagles as a breezy and rootsy presence at the sunset of the British Invasion and the heady beginnings of art rock and punk. Even their name was all-American. Appropriately, the greatest hits package — released four years later and before the band's growing cynicism peaked with Hotel California — distilled four albums worth of peaceful easy feelings into the perfect salve for a nation reeling from Vietnam and Watergate.
Albums sold in U.S.: 22 million
Weeks at No. 1: 5
Weeks on Chart: 133
Released: Feb. 17, 1976
3 Rumours
Fleetwood Mac
Lindsey Buckingham recalls coming into the studio with a drum part in mind for the verse to ''Go Your Own Way'': ''I had been listening to the Rolling Stones' 'Street Fighting Man' and it had this drumbeat that was like boom-ta-pop-boom, and I wanted something like that. But Mick [Fleetwood] is all instinct...he couldn't play what I wanted. He ended up paraphrasing, playing it the way he felt it, and man, we got something even more interesting.''
And so it went. For one tortured and brilliant year, in one of the most revered stories in pop mythology, the embattled members of Fleetwood Mac sank themselves into what producer Richard Dashut calls ''a collaborative emotional cauldron'' and emerged with Rumours — an enduring testament to the grace of romantic pain.
The L.A.-based band began recording 400 miles to the north, in Sausalito. After a brief tour, they resumed recording in L.A. and Florida. Along the way, Stevie Nicks dumped boyfriend Buckingham, John and Christine McVie were in the midst of a divorce, and Fleetwood's marriage was in turmoil. Meanwhile, the band's previous album, Fleetwood Mac, was climbing the charts. ''There was this sense something bigger than any of us was looming on the horizon,'' Buckingham says. ''We chose to keep our eye on the ball.''
''We were with each other 24 hours a day in a room with no windows,'' recalls Dashut. ''Everyone knew everyone else's business. Time just exploded.''
Rumours overtook Barbra Streisand's A Star Is Born and sat at No. 1 for 31 weeks. Says Buckingham: ''Our pain translated so heavily into the grooves that people related to it. They could hear the breakups on the record and observe them in the press. It was a publicist's dream.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 17 million
Weeks at No. 1: 31
Weeks on Chart: 134
Released: February 1977
4 Untitled
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin's fourth salvo was not created in the most comfortable of circumstances. Much of it was recorded (in the spring of 1971) at a dilapidated mansion outside of London that was so cold and damp, the musicians often jammed in front of a fireplace. ''I remember playing the recorder and drinking cider; we'd dip the fireplace poker into the cider to make it hot,'' bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones recalls. ''If you wanted a house where you could make an awful lot of noise, you had to take what you could get.''
That particular warm-up, in fact, led to what Jones says was ''a hopeful song, and there wasn't a lot of hope around at that time'' — ''Stairway to Heaven,'' the sweeping, soon-to-be-overplayed centerpiece of an album that caught England's preeminent blooze-rock monarchs incorporating folk (''Going to California''), metallic rockabilly (''Rock and Roll,'' which grew out of a jam on ''Good Golly Miss Molly''), and riffy monsters (''Misty Mountain Hop'') into one heady, unified blast. ''We didn't labor over it, and it sounds like that,'' Jones says. ''The band was getting very tight and very creative. It was a natural high, dare I say it.'' As for the iconoclastic packaging — no official title, no band name or catalog number printed on the original LP — Jones shrugs, ''It was one less thing to worry about.''
Title or no, the album (which came to be known as Led Zeppelin IV) became a longstanding rite of passage for American teenagers — even for a bunch of future alterna-rock terrorists like the Butthole Surfers. ''It taught me not to be afraid to be ridiculous and trippy,'' says guitarist Paul Leary. ''Like 'The Battle of Evermore' — I remember thinking 'How could anyone come up with something this weird and put it on a record?' It took guts.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 16 million
Peak Position: 2
Weeks on Chart: 259
Released: Nov. 8, 1971
5 The Bodyguard
Whitney Houston / Various Artists
When Whitney Houston entered the studio to record six songs for the soundtrack of The Bodyguard, she was both an established superstar and a nervous novice. The sessions coincided with the making of the film, which featured Houston's debut in a starring role, opposite Kevin Costner. ''It was pretty heavy duty for someone who was coming in as a rookie, costarring with somebody as huge as Kevin,'' says Houston. ''But I was really excited about the songs I had chosen to sing and I figured, If people like 'em they'll go along with the movie.''
Most listeners will always associate the best-selling soundtrack of all time with the best-selling single of all time. For well over a year after its initial release in October 1992, there was no escaping Houston's cover of Dolly Parton's ''I Will Always Love You.'' But the song that triggers the sweetest memory for Houston is her remake of ''I'm Every Woman,'' an R&B hit for Chaka Khan back in the late '70s.
''I love Chaka so much,'' Houston gushes. ''And I had so much fun recording that song. I was about six months pregnant at the time, so I felt like I was every woman, because I had life inside me.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 15 million
Weeks at No. 1: 20
Weeks on Chart: 141
Released: Nov. 17, 1992
6 Born in the U.S.A.
Bruce Springsteen
If it's true that to be great is to be misunderstood, then Ronald Reagan paid Bruce Springsteen a huge compliment: In a 1984 campaign speech, the then President praised the hope and optimism that inspired the songs on the Boss' Born in the U.S.A.In fact, Springsteen's most commercially successful album was in many ways a sobering reflection of the doubts and fears that afflicted many working-class Americans during the Reagan era.
Of course, it was also a killer pop album. Born in the U.S.A. spawned seven top 10 singles, ranging from scathing social critiques like the title track, to brooding romantic ballads like ''I'm on Fire,'' to irresistibly infectious rockers like ''Dancing in the Dark'' and ''Cover Me.'' But the album had a tortured history. Springsteen and the E Street Band began recording it in May 1982 (when 7 out of 10 tracks were cut in a mere two weeks), but after some less-than-fruitful sessions, Springsteen opted to release his acoustic Nebraska album instead; sessions for Born in the U.S.A. didn't resume until almost a year later. Max Weinberg, E Street Band drummer (and now Conan O'Brien's bandleader), recalls that during those initial two weeks, ''the spontaneity was at a fever pitch. The night we recorded 'Born in the U.S.A.' was the single greatest night of recording I've ever experienced.''
Born may have been slow in coming together, but Springsteen said there was a reason: ''The recording is not what took the time; it was the writing — and waiting till I felt, 'Well, there's an album here; there's some story being told.'''
Longtime Springsteen fan Melissa Etheridge, who was honing her own singer-songwriter skills at the time of its release, remembers the album not only for its political punch but also for its ''passionate, lonely, intense love songs. I played two or three of the songs in bars, and I remember really loving 'I'm on Fire' and thinking that someday I'd want to write a song that could evoke such feeling in others. Not wanting to copy it, but wanting to reach that level of communication.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 15 million
Weeks at No. 1: 7
Weeks on Chart: 139
Released: June 4, 1984
7 Boston
Boston
Critics wrote it off as ''corporate rock,'' but Boston came to life in the most underground of circumstances. For seven years, a gangly MIT grad named Tom Scholz crawled home from an engineering job at Polaroid, crept into his basement, and crafted lush layers of guitar riffs in a homegrown studio. From this meticulous moonlighting came a chunk of ear candy that would later form a cornerstone of hard-rock radio, but for years Scholz's crystalline demos won nothing but rejection from record companies — including Epic, the label that eventually released it. ''I thought it was good music,'' Scholz deadpans, ''but they didn't think it would sell.''
Even when Epic came around for a second listen, the suits were so suspicious of Scholz's BeanTown symphonies — soaring, Tupperware-tight rock that married the white-boy boogie of Jeff Beck to the majestic sweep of Beethoven — that they asked him and his basement-tapes comrade, singer Brad Delp, to prove their chops with a full band. ''They didn't accept it until we put together some bodies in a rehearsal hall in Cambridge and somebody from Epic saw the actual bodies playing,'' recalls producer John Boylan, who teamed up with Scholz to mix tracks.
America needed no such persuasion. Within weeks of its 1976 release, Boston's treasure trove of party-hearty anthems was on its way to becoming the biggest-selling debut album in history. Even so, Scholz, who later took Boston to MCA after wrangling with Epic over royalties, never did shed his renegade skin. ''The music business, as I know it, has been a horrifying experience,'' he muses. ''I always had to laugh, afterward, when Boston got lumped in with the 'corporate rock' bands. Here's a band that was basically me and Brad in a basement. You couldn't get any more off-the-wall than we were.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 15 million
Peak Position: 3
Weeks on Chart: 132
Released: Aug. 25, 1976
8 Hotel California
Eagles
The inside cover of the vinyl edition of Hotel Californiapictures a shadowy, sharp-featured figure leaning out over an indoor hotel balcony, arms spread out like wings. Hmmm, could this dark angel be...Satan?
Well, no: It's an exotic-looking female model — but that hasn't stopped the mysterious jacket and the metaphorically loaded '76 classic therein from being perennial favorites of Beelzebub-hunting conspiracy theorists for two decades. ''Which, I think, is a real hoot,'' says Don Henley. ''This rumor in certain parts of the religious community that the devil was actually on the cover arose again a year or two ago.... The album has a life of its own because of this kind of thing, like 'Paul is dead.'''
More literalist misconceptions too abound. ''People always tend to think it's about California,'' Henley says, ''but I think it was about the dark underbelly of American culture at large.''
Whether bemoaning the great land grab of ''The Last Resort'' or delineating the spoils of ''Life in the Fast Lane,'' the Eagles evidenced ironic awareness of their own complicity. Says Henley: ''Popularity in America is ephemeral. And we knew that.
''I liken it to the moth. It [hatches] into this very beautiful creature. And during the very short time that it lives, generally,'' Henley chuckles, ''it bangs into a 150-watt lightbulb until it kills itself.'' Well, not quite; as the eminently resurrectable Eagles have proved, you can check out any time you like, but...
Albums sold in U.S.: 14 million
Weeks at No. 1: 8
Weeks on Chart: 133
Released: Dec. 8, 1976
9 Greatest Hits
Elton John
For a lot of people now in their 20s, Elton John's Greatest Hitsserves as a soundtrack to childhood. Maybe it's because ditties like ''Bennie and the Jets'' and ''Crocodile Rock'' had the dippy bounce of nursery rhymes, or because John — a flamboyant gnome in sequined sunglasses — looked like a Saturday morning cartoon character. But something in his string of sugary pop smashes from the early '70s endeared him to a generation that would grow up to favor pricklier performers like Nirvana and Hole.
'It's just kid-friendly stuff,'' says songwriter Ben Folds, 29, whose piano-pounding work with the band Ben Folds Five is currently winning raves for returning well-crafted Eltonian pop to the Lollapalooza set. ''Even now, if I see old footage of him around that time period, I'm just in a trance watching it. It blows my mind.''
Equally mind-blowing is the pace at which Captain Fantastic cranked out these hits. Whereas most compilations cover an epic chunk of a career, Greatest Hits consists of singles that Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin spit out in the mad span of five years, between '70 and '74. In those days John was a master dabbler — a Tin Pan Alley street sweeper careering from mock ragtime (''Honky Cat'') to mock gospel (''Border Song'') to mock roadhouse rock (''Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting'') — but somehow he kept from crashing into kitsch. ''Some of the songs are really random,'' Folds admits. ''I mean, 'Rocket Man' — I have no idea what the hell that's all about. But it's got such a vibe to it. There's no logical explanation of why that should be moving to people, except that Elton John just captures something intangible.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 13 million
Weeks at No. 1: 10
Weeks on Chart: 104
Released: Nov. 4, 1974
10 Cracked Rear View
Hootie & The Blowfish
Blowfish drummer Jim ''Soni'' Sonefeld remembers looking at the SoundScan figures almost two years ago, when his band's major-label debut, Cracked Rear View, was selling a very acceptable 9,000 copies a week. ''We were excited at the time,'' says Sonefeld, ''but you looked up and you saw Green Day selling 106,000 units in a week, and you're thinking 'How do you get that many fans? How long do you need to do that?'''
Not long, actually; no need to be green with envy. By midsummer '95, Hootie & the Blowfish had not just supplanted those pop punks in the fast lane but, in a surprise upset, usurped Michael Jackson's HIStory at the top of the charts. Today, Rear View ranks among the top 10 sellers of all time and is tied with Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction as the second-biggest debut album ever, behind Boston. Surpassing that record looks to be well within Hootie's grasp.
''When it all happens it's such a blur you don't even realize it's happening,'' Sonefeld says, still as dazed as anyone by the inexplicable phenomenon that is his band. ''When it's snowballing, that's when you pinch yourself and say, Can this really be happening to me? But you're working so hard, you just keep going, man. You ride the roller coaster as long as you've got a seat.''
Any irony in their quick rise to the top may have been most apparent when Hootie picked up a Best Pop Performance Grammy this year from presenters Kiss — a band whose cheesy classics the South Carolinians were still covering in bar stints just a couple of years ago. ''Yeah, we used to do 'Calling Dr. Love,''' admits — no, make that brags — bassist Dean Felber. ''What a great song. I mean, it's 'Doctor Love,' man,'' he adds, still as much superfan as superstar.
Albums sold in U.S.: 13 million
Weeks at No. 1: 8
Weeks on Chart: 93 (and counting)
Released: July 5, 1994
11 Appetite for Destruction
Guns N' Roses
Behold Slash's summation of the mid-'80s hard-rock scene: ''Completely f---in' dead. There wasn't anything going on with any kind of balls.''
The Guns N' Roses guitarist is bemoaning the state of affairs before the unleashing of Appetite for Destruction, the band's 1987 debut disc, which kick-started a sputtering genre. Armed with Slash's down-yer-throat guitar licks, Axl Rose's Katharine Hepburn-on-crack vocals, and a don't-mess-with-me 'tude, Guns didn't just announce their arrival — they shoved their way to the front of the line, ripped up the guest list, then beat the hell out of the bouncer.
Chockful of urban-underbelly-themed tunes (''Welcome to the Jungle,'' ''Paradise City''), Appetite was recorded at a track-a-day pace in L.A., where the band was living out of a rental van and gigging on the gritty Sunset Strip. ''There was no thought involved,'' Slash recalls. ''In the midst of trying to survive, we just happened to write these songs. I can't imagine doing 'Mr. Brownstone' or 'Sweet Child O' Mine' with a preconceived notion that we were going anywhere with it.''
Perhaps that's why Guns ran into trouble after Appetiteclimbed to No. 1 (capping a slow burn of 50 weeks) and the band earned the high-pressure moniker of ''the next Rolling Stones.'' Despite ongoing commercial success, things began to fall apart. Against a backdrop of drug problems and feuding, drummer Steven Adler was squeezed out in 1990, while rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin left a year later. ''The thing that f---ed us up the most was the dead time after the success of the album and the tour,'' Slash explains. ''We were so screwed up from the reality kicking in on us and having to take things a bit more seriously. It was a reality that took a lot of adjustment, years of adjustment.'' We know the feeling: Nine years after Appetite's release, we're still trying to get our hair to stop standing on end.
Albums sold in U.S.: 13 million
Weeks at No. 1: 5
Weeks on Chart: 147
Released: July 21, 1987
12 Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd
When not settling in on such cheerier topics as materialism, war, and insanity, Dark Side of the Moon is constantly reminding the aging listener — with Solomonic morbidity — that he or she is ''shorter of breath and one day closer to death.'' Jeez, no wonder so many people took drugs while listening to this album.
The 1973 perennial's remarkable sales run, in sharp contrast to the consumer's mortal coil, has showed little sign of shuffling off. Five years ago, Billboard ruled that albums of a certain age (at least two years old and absent from all Billboard charts for three consecutive months) would now be listed on the Pop Catalog chart. Ex-Pink Floyd songwriter Roger Waters believes Dark Side was largely responsible, having spent a record-breaking 591 consecutive and 741 total weeks on the trade's regular sales list — where, he figures, it and other classics were taking up space the industry would rather award to new releases.
Waters regards 1979's The Wall as ''a much more important work'' but feels protective of Moon's legacy in light of its rep as a sonic stoner fave. Through the years, ''I've very much picked up a feeling that Dark Side is easy-listening, wafting sort of music; you turn the lights down low and smoke a joint and drift away into some sort of New Age blissful state,'' he says. ''And that's always confused me, because I had thought the songs were actually about something more than that.'' Indeed, the album was an enormously effective and properly spooky raging against the dying of all sorts of lights. Whether or not you inhaled.
Albums sold in U.S.: 13 million
Weeks at No. 1: 1
Weeks on Chart: 741
Released: Feb. 15, 1973
13 No Fences
Garth Brooks
When it came time to put the finishing touches on his good-time anthem ''Friends in Low Places,'' Garth Brooks knew exactly how to lure plenty of pals — lowly or otherwise — into the studio. ''After we laid down the track, [the musicians] were called in to sing on the chorus, for a party atmosphere,'' remembers Rob Hajacos, the fiddle player on all Brooks' sessions. ''We were standing around a couple of microphones, and somebody passed a 12-pack of beer down through the crowd. Garth was right next to me, and he said, 'You need to open that into the microphone.' I didn't [realize I was] trashing a $3,000 mike, but in the fade, you can hear my pop-top. That's the feel he wanted.''
Brooks had other reasons to celebrate. Much to the surprise of everyone in Nashville (all seven major labels had rejected him at first), his self-titled debut album, released a year before in 1989, had gone platinum. Any notion that Brooks' success was a fluke was dispelled when No Fences, the follow-up featuring the smash country single ''Friends in Low Places,'' sold a million copies in its first five weeks of release and went on to become the biggest-selling country album of all time. Once again, Brooks tapped into a melodic blend of classic and contemporary country that spoke to the same audience that revered Brooks' pop influences, James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg. It didn't hurt that Brooks' label, Capitol Nashville, marketed the album with the aggressiveness of a major pop release. ''It was very expensive to do,'' recalls Joe Mansfield, then Capitol's vice president of marketing and sales. ''We threw the dice, and we won big.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 13 million
Peak Position: 3
Weeks on Chart: 224
Released: Aug. 27, 1990
14 Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston
When Arista Records president Clive Davis first spotted the 19-year-old Whitney Houston singing in her mother Cissy's nightclub act, his star-potential radar went off the scale. ''She had this incredible range and this stunning beauty,'' Davis recalls, ''and you just knew she was special.'' But Davis wasn't taking any chances. After signing Houston in 1983, he spent almost two years showcasing her to industry bigwigs at exclusive engagements and making sure he had the right material for her debut album. ''We wanted to attract the best writers and producers around the country,'' he says, ''in recognition of the fact that not only must you be a great singer but you must also have great material.''
To say that Davis' diligence paid off would be an understatement. After debuting in the winter of 1985, Whitney Houston rode the charts for more than three years — proving that even in the fickle world of pop music a gorgeous babe with a voice like buttah and the right connections is pretty much a sure thing. The album spawned three No. 1 singles: ''Saving All My Love for You,'' ''How Will I Know,'' and ''The Greatest Love of All.'' But Houston looks back most fondly on her first top 10 hit, ''You Give Good Love,'' because ''it was very delicate, and so sweet.''
In retrospect, she remembers being less daunted by the success of her debut than by the promotional campaign that preceded it. ''Arista started putting out these posters that said, 'She's Got It!' And I thought, Maybe they're being too presumptuous here. Because you never know what's going to happen with a first album, whether it's going to be accepted and loved or hated. So I was really scared. But obviously, they had a lot of faith.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 12 million
Weeks at No. 1: 14
Weeks on Chart: 162
Released: Feb. 21, 1985
15 Slippery When Wet
Bon Jovi
It's a good thing Jon Bon Jovi doesn't always follow a first impulse. Take, for example, his early thinking about which songs should not grace his band's third album. ''We wrote 'You Give Love a Bad Name' only with the idea that Loverboy might use it, because they were open to outside songs,'' he recalls. ''And I certainly did not want to record 'Livin' on a Prayer' when we wrote it. I just felt we missed the mark. Goes to show how much I knew.''
With the summer '86 release of Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi would learn much more: that a bunch of tousled rockers from the leather-'n'-spandex recesses of New Jersey could score back-to-back No. 1 singles (guess which two?) on their way to a 12-times-platinum album. Named after a strip club in Vancouver — where the album was recorded — Slippery When Wetoffered an FM-friendly blend of syrupy power ballads (Operation Get Girls Sappy) and frothy fist pumpers (Operation Keep Guys Happy). While the album's sexed-up message helped sell arena seats around the world, its original jacket, which featured a wet-T-shirt-clad babe, threatened to spell trouble with the then-tenacious PMRC. The band (which also includes Richie Sambora, David Bryan, Alec John Such, and Tico Torres) requested a recall. ''Thank God [former PolyGram president] Dick Asher said fine and burned half a million album covers,'' Bon Jovi notes. ''The only place it came out was Japan, because it was too late to recall. The rest of the world got my finger writing the words 'Slippery When Wet' on a black Hefty bag.''
The album's impact on the music industry also proved hefty; pouffy-haired pop-metal copycats (Warrant, Winger) suddenly sprouted up everywhere. To this legacy, Jon Bon Jovi offers two words: ''I'm sorry.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 12 million
Weeks at No. 1: 8
Weeks on Chart: 94
Released: Aug. 18, 1986
16 Back in Black
AC/DC
In 1980, AC/DC were five albums into their career when 33-year-old lead singer Bon Scott went on a bender in London and choked to death on his own vomit in the backseat of a car. Brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, who had brought Scott into the band six years earlier in Australia, attended the funeral and returned to their respective flats in London, unsure if AC/DC would continue. ''My brother called me one day because we were mourning and said, 'Listen, rather than us sitting around wallowing, why don't we get together and write songs?''' Angus recalls. ''And that's what we did.''
They secured a rehearsal space in an industrial area of London where, according to Angus, ''the owner said, 'You can make as much noise as you want here.' Which was just the right environment for us.''
Six months later, AC/DC were ''Back in Black.'' They had taken on Brian Johnson, a vocalist with the proper scream reflex and, ironically, one who had first been brought to the band's attention by Scott. He had witnessed Johnson having an appendicitis attack on stage — a bit of business Scott thought was part of the act. It wasn't.
Released as a tribute to Scott, Back in Black sported an all-black cover, and its first track began with the tolling of bells. But the other nine anthemic songs celebrated the concerns of teen boys, hanging on aching testosterone riffs and such carefully crafted lyrical insights as ''She was a fast machine/She kept her motor clean/She was the best damn woman that I ever seen.''
''We didn't want to do anything on the album that was soppy,'' Angus says. ''We wanted to do something AC/DC fans would understand.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 12 million
Peak Position: 4
Weeks on Chart: 131
Released: July 25, 1980
17 Bat Out of Hell
Meat Loaf
There was a time when no one was yet asking, ''Meat Loaf... again?'' Though Rocky Horror Picture Show backtalkers knew him as the cadaverous biker Eddie, Loaf was still a fresh commodity to most music fans when Hell unfroze in 1977. In fact, his debut got off to such a slow kickstart that it never made the top 10, though it's resided in Pop Catalog heaven since. Some critics, suspicious of the presence of E Streeters Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, heard Springsteenian echoes in his hyperdrive, but Jim Steinman had penned most of the material well before Born to Run. The hellfire-and-Firestone title track was a crackling homage to ''Teen Angel''-style death songs; other inspirations feeding the album's gleeful grandiosity included Phil Spector, musical theater and movies, and...basic '50s rock.
''In its scope it's bigger,'' Loaf admits, ''and granted, in the '50s a song was a minute and 57 seconds long, or a long one was 2:52. But if you break 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light' up, it's a lot of 2-minute-52-second segments.'' Originally, there were more bits still. "The original 'Paradise' was, like, 23 minutes long, and it went off here and there. And [producer]Todd [Rundgren] went, 'Whaddya doing? You gotta make this a record!' So he made it nine minutes long; he said, 'Now, that's a record!'''
Happily, even after editing, the horny comic operetta ''Paradise'' — a riotous passion play taking Loaf and future Clash moll Ellen Foley from backseat first base to unhappily ever after — still sported its memorable cameo by Yankee broadcaster Phil (''Holy cow'') Rizzuto, the attention from which, Loaf says, ''he credits for his making the Baseball Hall of Fame.'' Loaf may have to wait awhile to be inducted into rock's own hall. But Batswings eternal as an ironically sophisticated paean to utter immaturity, positively Wagnerian in its only halfway tongue-in-cheek glorification of teenhood as godhead.
Albums sold in U.S.: 12 million
Peak Position: 14
Weeks on Chart: 82
Released: Jan. 30, 1977
18 Saturday Night Fever
The Bee Gees / Various Artists
Maurice Gibb still shudders at the mere thought of the Chateau D'Herouville, the French studio where the Bee Gees perfected the pulse of ''Stayin' Alive'' 20 years ago. ''The place was a mess!'' he laughs. ''It was run-down, it was freezing, there was no heat. It was like living in the sticks.''
Gibb had no way of knowing, but the frisky, jubilant sound that came out of that cold would whip up a heat unmatched since the days of Beatlemania. The Bee Gees (brothers Maurice, Robin, and Barry) were cutting their own album when their manager, Robert Stigwood, asked to borrow some R&B songs for a movie. ''All we were told,'' Maurice recalls, ''was that it was about a Brooklyn guy who works at a paint shop across the bridge in New York and goes out every Saturday night and wins a dance competition.'' Fueled by John Travolta's turbo-charged booty-shaking, Stigwood's Saturday Night Fever became a box office surprise, while its disco soundtrack turned into a full-throttle sensation, yielding a seemingly bottomless supply of hits. ''The world wanted to dance,'' Gibb marvels. ''Lawyers and judges and people who never buy albums, normally, were buying Saturday Night Fever and taking dance lessons.''
The Bee Gees got most of the credit and later bore the brunt of the backlash, but Fever is actually a crazy quilt of jams and jingles, bouncing from nightclub barn burners (the Trammps' ''Disco Inferno'') to instrumental oddities (Walter Murphy's ''A Fifth of Beethoven''). What unifies this mishmash is the simple urge to get down — a rush of post-Vietnam euphoria. For a few feverish months, ''there was nothing to protest against anymore,'' sighs KC and the Sunshine Band frontman H.W. Casey. ''It was like, wow, now we can turn our direction toward being happy.''
Albums sold in the U.S.: 11 million
Weeks at No. 1: 24
Weeks on Chart: 120
Released: Nov. 7, 1977
19 Purple Rain
Prince and the Revolution
He was still called Prince, and despite several hit singles, he was a household name only in houses in Minneapolis. All that changed with Purple Rain. The album, a mix of arena-ready rock like ''Let's Go Crazy'' and mutant-funk jams like ''Baby I'm a Star,'' spawned four top 10 singles and stayed at No. 1 for 24 weeks. The movie, which he wrote and starred in with his band the Revolution, established the kinky funk-rock swashbuckler as the era's least likely pinup.
''That whole time was amazing,'' recalls Lisa Coleman, the Revolution's keyboardist. ''We'd have acting classes with an acting coach. Our gear was set up on the other side of the room, so after that, we'd work on songs. We all look back on it with total fascination.''
The album itself was a hodgepodge, consisting of live and studio recordings with the Revolution and several Prince one-man-band sound orgies. One of the latter was ''When Doves Cry,'' written during the movie's postproduction. ''He called us at 4 a.m.,'' Coleman remembers. ''We were in our jammies, thinking, 'What now?' He came over and we got in his car and drove around L.A. listening to that song. He was so excited about it.''
In addition to stage-tested songs, she attributes the album's success to timing. Top 40 was at its most racially diverse in years; for a brief, shining moment, the radio blared hits by Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince. ''It was in synch with what was happening in music,'' acknowledges Coleman. ''We were trying to mix up the black and white thing. Purple Rain was our way of marrying those two worlds. I listen to it now and I say, 'No one plays music like that anymore!' It was slammin'.''
Albums sold in the U.S.: 11 million
Weeks at No. 1: 24
Weeks on Chart: 72
Released: June 25, 1984
20 Ropin' the Wind
Garth Brooks
Garth Brooks has referred to his third album as his ''postcard from the edge'': ''When I got through I said, 'My God, all these songs are out on a limb.''' That description was certainly true of his pumped-up cover of Billy Joel's ''Shameless,'' which Brooks took to melodramatic vocal heights. It also applied to ''Papa Loved Mama,'' one of the album's five hit singles, written by Brooks and Kim Williams.
''Kim came to me and said, 'You know, I'm a big Carl Sandburg fan,' and I was thinking, Carl Sandburg is a shortstop for the Chicago Cubs,'' Brooks said. ''Kim goes, 'No, man, he's a poet.''' Williams then recited what became the song's chorus: ''Papa loved mama/Mama loved men/Mama's in the graveyard/Papa's in the pen.'' Brooks remembered loving it, ''and right off the bat, we started writing the song. I said, 'He's a truck driver. He's gonna kill his wife because she's cheating on him, and he's gonna drive his damn semi right through wherever she's at.' God, it was a lot of fun to write.''
Recorded at the very last moment, ''Papa Loved Mama'' bumped another already completed song, a swing version of the Patsy Cline classic ''Walkin' After Midnight,'' from the album. (That track eventually surfaced on Brooks' 1992 album, The Chase.) Once again, Brooks made Billboard history: Ropin' the Wind became the first album to enter both the Top 200 album chart and the country chart at No. 1.
Albums sold in the U.S.: 11 million
Weeks at No. 1: 18
Weeks on Chart: 132
Released: Sept. 2, 1991
21 Dirty Dancing
Various Artists
On paper, a film about love in the Catskills' borscht belt probably didn't seem like a sure bet to seduce young audiences across the country. But in 1987, that's just what the sleeper hit Dirty Dancing did, thanks in large part to steamy choreography and a chart-topping soundtrack that set classic R&B chestnuts alongside glossy new singles by established artists. According to Patrick Swayze, who starred in the movie, the music was a key element from the beginning: ''With most movies, you start working on the soundtrack after the editing is done,'' he says. ''But in a movie with so much dancing, you have to have the music first. I think that provided a collaborative energy that pulled everyone together — music people, choreographers, directors, set designers, production designers, actors. There was a sense of collective passion.''
Beyond the smash singles ''(I've Had) The Time of My Life,'' a duet between Righteous Brother Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, and Eric Carmen's ''Hungry Eyes,'' the soundtrack showcased the talents of its leading man. Swayze, a songwriter since his teens, had penned ''She's Like the Wind'' with Stacey Widelitz years before Dancing but decided it was perfect for the film. Director Emile Ardolino agreed, and with Swayze on lead vocals, a hit was born.
Reflecting on the record's success, Swayze says, ''I think the music and every aspect of the film really blended in a beautiful way.... And it got people dancing! You can't listen to this music and not move.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 11 million
Weeks at No. 1: 18
Weeks on Chart: 96
Released: Aug. 4, 1987
22 Hysteria
Def Leppard
One day toward the end of recording Hysteria, producer Robert John ''Mutt'' Lange left the control room for a few minutes, and Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott picked up a guitar and began, he says, ''farting around.'' Nothing unusual about that, except that Lange happened to return in time to overhear some of Elliott's noodlings. ''He said to me, 'What the hell are you playing?''' Elliott reminisces in his adenoidal Sheffield accent. '''That's the best f---ing 'ook I've heard in five years.'''
That '''ook'' became the chorus to ''Pour Some Sugar on Me,'' the good-times, top-down sing-along anthem that eventually propelled Hysteria from decent follow-up status to blockbuster royalty. ''It became the most important song on the record,'' says Elliott. ''And it was done almost by accident. Had he not gone for a piss...''
Ironically, though, such moments of relaxed, spontaneous creativity were rare in the Hysteria sessions. On top of the pressure to live up to the massive success of its previous effort, 1983's Pyromania, the quintet experienced difficulties from the get-go. Lange was the band's first choice to produce the album, but he took a pass, citing exhaustion. And 10 months into the project — initially supervised by two replacements who couldn't measure up to Lange — drummer Rick Allen lost an arm in an automobile accident.
After learning of Allen's injury and hearing his predecessors' less-than-spectacular results, Lange decided to guide the group (''which left us cursing, thinking 'God! We could've had a year off!''' laughs Elliott). He scrapped the early recordings, sent the band back into the studio, and crafted a sound around the electronic drums Allen had learned to master. Eighteen more months and nearly $4 million later, Def Leppard delivered the finished product (its last major success) to Mercury. ''It was a nightmare,'' Elliott says of the recording engagement. ''But I don't have bad memories of it; I just remember not enjoying it at the time.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 11 million
Weeks at No. 1: 6
Weeks on Chart: 133
Released: Aug. 3, 1987
23 II
Boyz II Men
In February of 1994, Boyz II Men (vocalists Wanya Morris, Nate Morris, Shawn Stockman, and Michael McCary) traveled from their hometown of Philadelphia to see the NBA All-Star game in Minneapolis. They couldn't have guessed that the trip would end up being good for their career.
They carried with them a tape of their nearly finished second album, which included the madly romantic Babyface-produced ballad ''I'll Make Love to You'' (a song later to become, in a tie with Whitney Houston's ''I Will Always Love You,'' the longest-running No. 1 pop single of all time). The day after the game, the group dropped in on Minneapolis-based producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and previewed their new tracks.
''We told them the stuff sounded really great but they still needed a good begging song,'' Jam remembers. When Boyz II Men returned three weeks later, Jam and Lewis had written, and recorded the backing tracks for, ''On Bended Knee.'' They weren't prepared for the group's reaction.
''They said it sounded like a Garth Brooks song,'' Jam laughs. ''They'd be singing it and suddenly launch into these hilarious country drawls. I laid in a steel guitar and we went with it. It was crazy, but the funny thing was that even doing drawls they were in perfect harmony.''
When Boyz II Men's II came out six months later, it was more than perfect harmony — it was the perfect recipe. They dittoed the hip-hop rhythms and lush doo-wop vocals that had made their debut, Cooleyhighharmony, a smash, but took the edge off their super-prep image with good ol' soul sensuality, as evidenced by ''On Bended Knee,'' which was released — without the country drawls — as the album's second single. It sailed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Back off, Garth.
Albums sold in U.S.: 11 million
Weeks at No. 1: 5
Weeks on Chart: 86 (and counting)
Released: Aug. 23, 1994
24 Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em
M.C. Hammer
Jim Morrison had his leather. Springsteen had his denim. But if any musician were ever defined by his pants, it would be M.C. Hammer.
Garish and expansive, the Oakland rapper's baggy trousers could be all things to all people in the summer of 1990. To his detractors, their satin finish suited the glossiness of this sophomore album — 13 cuts of bubblegum hip-hop that, propelled by the frat-party popularity of his Rick James rip-off, ''U Can't Touch This,'' sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, won three Grammys, and topped Billboard's pop chart for 21 weeks (before being ousted by the debut of his Teutonic doppelganger, Vanilla Ice). Critics, including several rappers who took potshots at him in song and video, felt a still-emerging street genre had been swallowed up by Hammer's (he dropped the M.C. in 1991) videogenic dance steps and dopey lyrics.
But if droopy, the drawers in question were also wide: In contrast to a rap scene dominated from the East Coast by Public Enemy and from the West by N.W.A, a single like ''U Can't Touch This'' had the melodic familiarity needed to unlock tightly secured radio and MTV playlists. What had been largely an edgy, urban phenomenon started riding the airwaves into teenybopper territory, a process that soon rendered Hammer (who filed for bankruptcy on April 3) and his candy rap obsolete.
But even if today's gangsta rappers are harder than Hammer, their pants are just as baggy. Says MTV executive vice president of programming Andy Schuon: ''This was the song, and the man, and the whole package that brought rap music to a much wider group of people.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 10 million
Weeks at No. 1: 21
Weeks on Chart: 108
Released: Feb. 12, 1990
25 Tapestry
Carole King
Ode Records president Lou Adler recalls when he sensed the potential of a new album he was producing in the fall of 1970. ''Love Story was a big movie at the time, and I remember saying 'This is our Love Story.' In terms that it would be people's love stories and that it would be a success. And I remember one of the musicians, who was pretty hip, looking at me and saying 'Love Story?!'''
Adler was right, though. In the aftermath of Altamont and Kent State, a generation of rock fans approaching 30 needed to chill out, and that album — Carole King's Tapestry — was their comfort blanket. Inspired by the open-wound ballads of friend James Taylor, King, a former Brill Building hit cranker, presented Adler with ''an avalanche of great songs.'' The deluge included ''You've Got a Friend'' (later a hit for Taylor), ''So Far Away'' (about the loneliness brought on by King's first tour), and ''It's Too Late,'' an inordinately level headed breakup song. ''She touched on subjects that hadn't been touched upon yet for women,'' Adler says. ''And the songs touch the heart of every generation that goes through what she wrote about.''
Recorded with help from Taylor and Joni Mitchell, who was cutting Blue in the studio next door (''It was a musically and emotionally incestuous time,'' Adler says), Tapestry won four Grammys, including Album of the Year. Only one downbeat memory remains: The embroidered quilt pictured on the inner sleeve, which King stitched during the sessions, was presented to Adler — who can't remember where it is. ''The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame called me, and I haven't been able to find it,'' he says. ''I forgot how sad I was that I lost it until they called.''
Albums sold in U.S.: 10 million
Weeks at No. 1: 15
Weeks on Chart: 302
Released: Feb. 10, 1971
Written and reported by David Browne, Elysa Gardner, Jeff Gordinier, Nisid Hajari, Alanna Nash, Ethan Smith, Dan Snierson, Russ Spencer, and Chris Willman
