Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - The AC/DC Rule, Part 1
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
Quick, what was the only No. 1 album by Jimi Hendrix? How about the first No. 1 by Billy Joel? Jackson Browne? Pat Benatar? Pearl Jam? Lady Gaga?
In all cases, the answer isn’t obvious—it’s not the album you know best, the one with the most hits on it. It’s the album after that classic that goes to No. 1. And there’s no better example than AC/DC, the Australian-by-way-of-Scotland hard rock band that’s sold more than 20 million copies of Back in Black. But it was their next album (can you name it?) that topped the Billboard album chart.
Chris Molanphy has coined a term for this weird chart phenomenon: He calls it The AC/DC Rule. Just as less-good movie sequels open better at the box office than classic first installments, follow-up albums often chart higher than their slow-growing but hit-packed predecessors. Some of the rock and pop legends who fell prey to this chart phenomenon might surprise you…might just leave you shook all night long.
Podcast production by Asha Saluja.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:03.4 | Hey there, hit parade listeners. |
| 0:05.7 | What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. |
| 0:09.8 | Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. |
| 0:14.0 | Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? |
| 0:18.2 | Sign up for Slate Plus. |
| 0:20.5 | It's just $35 for the first year, and it supports not only this show, but all of Slate's |
| 0:27.1 | acclaimed journalism and podcasts. |
| 0:29.9 | Just go to slate.com slash hit parade plus. |
| 0:33.6 | You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus, Hit Parade |
| 0:40.1 | The Bridge are bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and |
| 0:46.6 | pop chart trivia. Once again, to join, that's slate.com slash hit parade plus. Thanks. And And now please enjoy part one of this hit parade episode. |
| 1:10.2 | Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. |
| 1:18.7 | I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why is the song number one series. |
| 1:25.8 | On today's show, 40 years ago, this week, in mid-February, |
| 1:31.3 | 1981, Billboard's album chart was dominated by rock groups. They took up half of that week's |
| 1:38.8 | top 10. LPs by The Police, Blondie, Sticks, and Ario Speedwagon were all riding high. |
| 1:47.0 | But the album by a rock group that had been lodged in the top ten the longest came from |
| 1:54.0 | an Australian band founded by a pair of Scottish brothers, one of whom wore a schoolboy's uniform while shredding his guitar on |
| 2:04.1 | stage. Nothing about this band was subtle, including their screeching lead vocalist. |
| 2:17.4 | Back in Black by ACDC was a monster and a career triumph. |
| 2:25.1 | The band had come back from a tragedy that could have broken them up. Instead, they wound |
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