FIRST! 10 Groundbreaking Achievements In Music History

On Thursday, August 1, Bud Light Music First commenced its historic “50/50/1” event, comprised of 50 concerts in each of the 50 states, by artists ranging from Miguel to The Flaming Lips to Ludacris—all on the same day. In light of that milestone, we wanted to look back at some other firsts in the history of the music business in which individuals broke new ground, reached record-shattering levels of popularity and success, or simply got to the mountaintop before anybody else.

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.

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.

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.

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.