Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - The Bridge: Legacy of the Elusive Chanteuse

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Music, Tv & Film, Arts

4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this mini-episode of Hit Parade, host Chris Molanphy is joined by Rich Juzwiak, writer for Jezebel as well as Slate’s advice column How to Do It. The two discuss the most recent full-length episode of Hit Parade, a breakdown of how Mariah Carey’s seasonal hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” finally hit No.1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, an improbable 25 years after its original release. Rich walks Chris through the history of Mariah fandom—both his own and her loyal “Lambs”—and how he appreciates her for her low moments as much as her pop peaks.

Chris quizzes a Slate Plus listener with some music trivia, and the contestant turns the tables with a chance to try to stump Chris with a question of his own. Then, Chris teases the upcoming full-length episode of Hit Parade, which will look at the history of novelty and comedy hits on the charts.

While this episode is available to all listeners, our trivia round is open only to Slate Plus members. If you are a member—or once you become a member—enter as a contestant here.

Want your question featured in an upcoming show? Email a voice memo to hitparade@slate.com.

Podcast production by Asha Saluja.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening, ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:14.6	Hey, everybody.
0:16.0	This is Chris Malamfi, host of Hit Parade, Slate's podcast of Pop Chart History. Welcome to The Bridge.
0:27.2	That's The Roof by Mariah Carey, a track from her 1997 album, Butterfly.
0:34.3	Carrie not only built this song out of the Mob Deep rap classic Shook Ones part two.
0:41.0	In a 1998 remix of the song, she invited Mob Deep themselves to rap on the song's bridge.
0:53.0	And as the roof moved Carrie away from her earlier pop-centric work
0:57.9	to more overt R&B and hip-hop, it represented yet another bridge in Mariah Carey's career.
1:16.4	And these mini-episodes bridge are full-length monthly episodes.
1:20.1	Give us a chance to catch up with listeners and enjoy some trivia.
1:26.1	This month, we're delighted to feature a special guest to help us talk about Mariah Carey.
1:29.2	But before we bring him in, we're going to do some follow-up on last month's full-length hit parade episode. And for that, I welcome back to the
1:34.7	mic, my producer for the bridge, Asha Saluja. Hey, Asha. Hello, Chris. Happy 20-20. Happy
1:40.8	2020 to you. So I got a few comments on the most recent hit parade episode, and I wonder if you can characterize a couple of them for me. Yeah, you know, I was lurking in your Twitter mentions like any good producer would do. And I noticed that everyone was hitting on the exact same question, and that question is the impact of
2:05.1	the movie Love Actually on the trajectory of All I Want for Christmas is Use Pop-Stardom. Do you think
2:12.6	that Love Actually had a big impact on All I Want for Christmas is You's Rise to the top.
2:18.3	Here's the facts, folks. There's really very little direct evidence that the appearance of the song
2:24.8	in Love Actually did much to help All I Want for Christmas is You on the charts. First of all,
2:32.7	the movie was a sizable theatrical hit in 2003,
2:36.4	but not an American blockbuster. It grossed about $60 million here, which is nothing to sneeze at,
2:42.8	but for a rom-com, that is really quite a modest hit. It was never number one at the box office,
2:47.9	never even came close. Generally, as it has been well chronicle, love actually became kind of a sleeper hit in the
	...

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