All Apologies Edition Part 1

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History, Music Commentary

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story of Nevermind, Nirvana’s genre-defining breakthrough, is a familiar one. Less well known is the saga of Billboard’s Modern Rock chart—and how college-rock staples of the 1980s like R.E.M. and The Cure gave way to heavier, more commercially dominant groups of the ‘90s like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and The Smashing Pumpkins. What sparked the grungification of the charts? How did Modern Rock become the new Top 40? And how did the Seattle sound pave the way for post-grunge bands like Sublime, Third Eye Blind, and even Creed? Join Chris Molanphy as he explores alternative rock’s evolution from the cutting edge to the middle of the road. Podcast production by Olivia Briley and Kevin Bendis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. Part two will
0:07.2	arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at
0:12.2	once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's
0:19.3	acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com
0:23.8	slash hit parade plus. You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives.
0:30.7	Plus, hit parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, deeper dives on our
0:37.0	episode topics, and pop chart trivia.
0:39.8	Once again, to join, that's slate.com slash hitparade plus. Thanks, and now please enjoy
0:47.1	part one of this hit parade episode.
0:54.0	Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast.
1:02.2	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series on today's show.
1:10.2	30 years ago, this month in early May
1:13.6	1995 this band from York Pennsylvania who went by the rather prosaic name Live
1:21.6	climbed to number one on the Billboard album chart with their second CD, Throwing Copper.
1:29.2	One year earlier, Live were a mid-tier band with a couple of very modest radio hits.
1:36.3	By 1995, their hit, Lightning Crashes, had topped the modern rock chart and even went into
1:44.0	high rotation at Top 40 Radio,
1:47.2	which pushed their album to number one.
1:50.0	This middling band was top of the heap.
1:54.5	Oh, my feeling coming back again like a rolling thunder chasing the wind.
2:06.6	So, how did live wind up for a moment the top band in America?
2:13.6	Simple. They were classified on the charts, on the radio, and in record stores as alternative rock.
	...

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