Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Hit Parade: The Fab Four Sweep Edition
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Slate Podcasts
4.8 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2017
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In episode two, Chris Molanphy takes a look at the historic week the Beatles swept the entire Billboard Top Five. You can see that chart right here. It’s a feat that’s never been repeated. But the Fab Four’s total domination of the pop charts was both a reflection of their massive popularity and a huge screwup by their American record label. Here’s the story of how Capitol Records nearly sabotaged the biggest rock band of all time. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening Ad-Free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:15.6 | Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate and Panoply about the hits from coast to coast. |
| 0:22.4 | I'm Chris Melanfitt, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number |
| 0:27.0 | One series. |
| 0:28.4 | On today's show, it's been called the most famous week in pop chart history, the week in |
| 0:33.8 | 1964 when the most famous group in rock and roll history dominated Billboard's iconic |
| 0:40.0 | Hot 100, topped off by this song. |
| 0:43.2 | Can buy me love? |
| 0:46.8 | Love. |
| 0:48.7 | Can buy me love. |
| 0:52.2 | It was the first dizzying peak of Beatlemania, America finally joining Britain in a total frenzy |
| 1:00.3 | over the Liverpool mop tops. |
| 1:02.4 | In the pages of Billboard magazine, the U.S. music industry's Bible, the Beatles' sweep of the charts |
| 1:07.7 | was epic. |
| 1:09.0 | They locked down the entire top five. Fifty-three years later, |
| 1:13.2 | that feat has yet to be repeated. But what if the whole thing was the result of a colossal mistake? |
| 1:19.3 | What if the Beatles' total control of the Hot 100 reflected not just their unprecedented popularity, |
| 1:25.2 | but how badly the music industry had dropped the ball. |
| 1:28.7 | Today on Hit Parade, I'll dissect the week the Beatles set multiple Hot 100 records, |
| 1:33.8 | including the one they still hold to this day for total top five dominance. |
| 1:38.6 | We'll talk about the perfect storm of circumstances that made that chart record possible. |
| 1:43.4 | You might think the Fab Four's American |
... |
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