Escapade - Janet Jackson It's all kind of the same song, isn't it. I like this same song she kept releasing with different words just fine this time she released it.
^^^ lol I like Opposites Attract and Escapade, not my favorite from either but they a good times with great videos. Janet Jackson was on a roll at this point.
I was thinking more about a skit that reoccurring guest Buck Henry did with the female cast members...
Give or take a month or two, we are at the halfway point of this remarkable thread. Starting in 1958, we have found ourselves in 1990 in 2022. Take a moment to ponder that and pat yourselves on the back
Pleasant little song, drenched with the Minneapolis sound and proving (once again) that Prince was the single most-influential act of the '80s. Not anything profound, but a joyous little twinkling delight with a bit of '60s retro in the intro and the melody and a whole lotta contemporary beats.
Yup, great point. Although Madge also took a pretty extended break - at least from contemporary pop - and ended up returning with arguably the best album of her career.
I'd agree with this. Whitney also lost a lot of her pop audience when she went R&B. That never really seemed to impact Mariah, who managed to bring pop listeners along.
Here is another one off that same album, The Real Thing. It kinda sounds like it belongs to a more recent decade to my ears... mid 2000s maybe. They were an aberration in their time.
I’d argue that the album you’re referring to was a bigger detour from contemporary pop than anything she did before it, but we will get there soon enough!
It kind of already begins at this point in the timeline. U Can't Touch This by MC Hammer is just about to be released and only goes as high as #8 because it was only available as a 12 inch single but the song and video were so omnipresent during spring/summer 1990 that it should've been a multi week #1. The album on the back of it will spend the most weeks at #1 since Purple Rain six years earlier. It really got out of hand a few years later but in 90-91 you started seeing cases like Do The Bartman and the final radio track off Janet's album (which could've broken the record and had EIGHT top 10s) that were airplay hits but no physical single
I feel the opposite. Mariah didnt explicitly market herself as an r&b singer until 1997 which was the moment AC dropped her like a hot potato and poured everything into Celine Dion as well as her singles becoming smaller hits than before. Her association with hip hop cost her a lot in the 90s though it worked in her favor when she came back strong in the mid 2000s
Many of the iconic songs I remember from the 90s from artists I lived were released on Promo only and thus were not eligible for the Hot 100. They’d hit number one on an airplay chart and hopefully move albums but the charts and markets really got literally segregated and I think all the charts suffered in quality as a result sooner or later. The 80s pop chart was still somewhat a reliable cross section of what people listened to even if it was a largely top down system. The 90s less so.
I think the 90s was also when the big genre divide started happening. It wasn't that insane for a tape collection in the late 80s to have U2, Whitney Houston, Bon Jovi and LL Cool J in it but come the 90s and there was very little overlapping between Mariah Carey and Nine Inch Nails fans. The 80s was this musical melting pot but the 90s were about picking a lane and staying there. The 90s also begat stan culture which is very toxic and cancerous. Their pea sized brains willing to explode when they learned of a time it was normal to like Michael Jackson AND Prince, Madonna AND Janet, Whitney AND Mariah, etc... because they've been conditioned that music is like sporting teams because "My Mariah has more #1s than your Madonna who outsold your Whitney who has a better voice than Janet who dances better than Rihanna who has more #1s than Christina who has a better voice than Dua Lipa who streams better than Britney who sold more albums than Taylor whose written more songs than Celine who has more Grammys than Katy Perry who has more #1s than Beyonce who has more money than......" is a real thing lmao
The difference is, aside from making mostly terrible movies (well, she was good in A League of Her Own, and Evita has many defenders, but aside from that...) Madonna was still in the news almost every day. Her infamous photo book is mostly forgotten now, but it was a very big deal at the time. Even if people weren't cruelly making fun of her weight, sweet girl next door Paula Abdul just couldn't compete with that when it came to media attention.
Paradoxically, the album chart became much more reliable when SoundScan was introduced in the early nineties. We started seeing big albums regularly debut at number one, a rare occurrence in the past.
Her big brother (and Epic) did the same kind of thing with the singles from Bad. The lead single was a tender ballad, next came "Beat It" 2.0 with the title track, and then they lightened the mood with "The Way You Make Me Feel" as the third single.
Brad Paisley didn't debut until 1999 - and he never had a Hot 100 #1, so we'll never get around to him here!
Yep. In the 70s only Elton (twice in 1975) and Stevie debuted at #1, flash forward a decade later and Springsteen, Jackson and Whitney, all following up mega selling blockbusters, debuted at #1.... come Soundscan and #1 debuts become normal and the rare case is when an album climbs to the top since first week became so front loaded from.the hardcore fans
I'm surprised to see it only took us 6 years to get here - thought this thread had run longer than that. So in theory, we'll be at January 2022 in January 2028. Though don't we eventually get to years where there are like 47 different #1 singles? Thread will go slower in years with dozens of #1s vs. like 8!
