FIRST! 10 Groundbreaking Achievements In Music History

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On the week of July 25, 1983, two very different artists from the same area of the alphabet launched careers that would forever alter the course of pop music and heavy metal, respectively. Madonna’s self-titled debut album and the first Metallica album, Kill ‘Em All, were both released the same week, although nobody would’ve guessed at the time what kind of blockbuster careers had just begun. Madge’s album debuted at #190 on the Billboard 200 before peaking at #8 a year later, while Metallica didn’t chart at all until reaching #155 in 1986, and peaking at #120 in 1988. Ultimately, however, Madonna sold five million and Kill ‘Em All went triple platinum, while each went on to sell many, many more copies of later albums.

NASA’s flight of Gemini 6A in 1965 was historic for a few reasons: it was the 13th manned American spaceflight, and the first manned rendezvous with another spacecraft, Gemini 7. But command pilot Walter Schirra Jr. and pilot Thomas P. Stafford made it historic in another way, when they snuck some bells and a harmonica onto the ship for the first performance of musical instruments in space (by humans, anyway). These days, of course, astronaut rock star Chris Hadfield is uploading David Bowie covers to the internet from outer space just like any kid on YouTube.

Although MTV has been known for its mercenary populist tendencies in programming music videos, and later anything but music videos, they displayed both a sense of humor and a flair for the obscure with the thematically appropriate pick for the first music video shown on the channel’s debut broadcast in August 1981. “Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Buggles was a little ditty that had topped the UK charts in 1979 but barely made a splash in the U.S. until it became inextricably tied to MTV history. The Buggles never made a second album and were forever tagged a “one-hit wonder,” but member Trevor Horn had a long, fruitful career as a producer, turning out songs by Yes and Art of Noise that wound up in heavy rotation on MTV.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has always been slow to recognize hip-hop as an art form, to the point that even those rappers who’ve won Grammys have been insulted by the feeling of too little recognition too late. When DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince were nominated for the first Best Rap Performance award at the 1989 ceremony, they were also invited to perform and present an award. But when they found out that their award wouldn’t be part of the telecast, they joined LL Cool J and other peers in a boycott of the ceremony. There wasn’t a Grammy for Best Rap Album until 1996, the first of which went to Naughty by Nature, and even today, only Lauryn Hill and Outkast have won Album of the Year for hip-hop, much to Kanye West’s particular chagrin.

By the ’90s, selling a million copies of an album was no big deal. But toward the end of the decade, as SoundScan sales climbed to unprecedented new heights, and highly anticipated albums sold more and more quickly, a new kind of arms race was on. Buoyed by “I Want It That Way” and some of the most rabid young fans pop music had ever seen, The Backstreet Boys’ Millennium sold 1,134,00 the week of May 18, 1999, shattering all previous records. That number would later be beaten by the group’s follow-up album, Black & Blue, as well as efforts by artists such as Eminem, Taylor Swift and BSB’s rival 'N Sync (still the record holders). The previous high-water mark was Pearl Jam, whose 1993 album Vs. fell just 50,000 short of the million mark.

Before he was a leading civil rights activist, and long before he was questioning Jay Z’s activist credentials, Harry Belafonte was moving units like no one had ever seen before. Born in Harlem to a Jamaican mother, Belafonte spent half of his childhood in Jamaica, which led to his breakthrough album Calypso, which mixed original compositions with the sound of Trinidadian calypso and Jamaican mento folk music. Thanks largely to “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” Calypso became the first full-length LP to sell a million copies in the space of a year, topping the pop charts for 31 weeks (11 of them consecutive). And thanks to Beetlejuice and Lil Wayne samples, “Day-O” remains ubiquitous over a half century later.

The Georgia hard rock band Jackyl was never afraid of using a little novelty value to get a moment in the spotlight. Their 1992 breakthrough hit, “The Lumberjack,” was a brazenly goofy little ditty notable mainly for featuring a chainsaw in place of a lead guitar. A few years later, they got back in the headlines by going after Guinness Book notoriety with a couple of records. First, they broke George Thorogood’s record for the most concert’s performed in a 50-day period during a 1998 tour. Then, that same year, they became the first band to perform 21 different concerts, in different locations for different audiences, within a 24-hour period.

Rock and roll was still gradually being accepted as a daily fact of life in America when New York’s WOR debuted the first FM rock station. Up to that point, FM stations had only featured rock in a Top 40 context. Though the station only lasted about 14 months in that form after its launch in July 1966, its freeform approach—with DJs given more freedom in terms of the pacing of the broadcast and the selection of music—was undoubtedly an influence on the album- oriented rock format that would rise up in the 1970s.

One of the foremost pioneers in gangsta rap as we know it today, Ice-T had the bad fortune to launch his career shortly after Tipper Gore and the PMRC’s successful campaign to get “Parental  Guidance: Explicit Lyrics” stickers on the front of albums that weren’t squeaky clean. Ice-T’s debut, Rhyme Pays, ended up not just the first rap album released by Sire/Warner Bros. but also the first rap album to bear the sticker that would become something of a badge of pride for decades of MCs who chose not to mince words. T continued to push the envelope over the next few years, responding to the PMRC on the 1989 album The Iceberg/Freedom Of Speech…Just Watch What You Say! and encountering his biggest firestorm of controversy ever with the 1992 single “Cop Killer” by his band Body Count.

Stadium status is something any touring musician aspires to now, but 50 years ago, it was simply unheard of for a musical act to play in an athletic venue—let alone justify playing in one as large as a MLB stadium. But on August 15, 1965, at the height of Beatlemania, the Liverpool quartet shattered all previous records for concert attendance and ticket receipts, with 55,000 fans paying for a glimpse of John, Paul, George and Ringo to the tune of $300,000 (or over $2 million in 2013 figures). Today’s stars may enjoy stadiums outfitted for concert sound today, but back then The Beatles didn’t get much out of being drowned out by screaming fans, and retired from performing a year later. McCartney, however, returned to the Queens ballpark in 2008, just before it was demolished, as a guest at Billy Joel’s final concert at Shea.