Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of

Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series? On our last episode, I explained the concept of the data lag on the charts.

How the gap between when Billboard collects data and the date on its charts

means your birthday song might not be your real life birthday song.

And that's an important concept to understand what happened in December 1991 and January

1992 when nirvana took on Michael Jackson in a now legendary battle on the

billboard album chart. New Epic eats Chip Shop Curry Source from McCoy's

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Tast like the real McCoy's.

In November 1991, just before Thanksgiving, pop superstar Michael Jackson emerged with his first new album of the 90s, the follow-up to his 1987 blockbuster Bad. the

90s, the follow-up to his 1987 blockbuster, Bad. The new disc was called dangerous,

and it was greeted with a level of hype more akin to the Olympics than a pop album.

Jackson's label, Epic, insisted the media refer to him for the first time ever

as the King of Pop, and most journalists and fans dutifully obliged.

And the whole dangerous campaign kicked off two weeks before the album drop with the first single and one very expensive video.

So get on up, here it is the world premiere of Michael Jackson, Black or white?

Black or white wasn't just a video. It was an event.

In America, it premiered simultaneously on MTV, VH1, B.E.T, and Fox, as well as the BBC's Top of the

pops in the UK. The global audience for black or white across 27 countries was estimated at 500 million viewers.

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