This Week in Music History | July 27 – August 2

July 29, 2020

Posted in: This Week in Music History

Weird Al went #1 for the very first time, the legendary Geddy Lee was born, and MTV ACTUALLY played music. Here’s everything that went down this week in music history.

1973 – July 28th, The “Summer Jam” concert takes place at Watkins Glen racetrack in New York.

  • The festival outdrew Woodstock with a crowd of over 600,000.
  • The tickets were only $10 for the festival.
  • Summer Jam was headlined by The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band, and The Band.

1981 – August 1st, MTV goes on the air, bringing music videos to the masses – at least the ones with cable.

  • The music videos were guided by television personalities known as “video jockeys”.
  • The first music video shown on MTV was The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”.
  • This was followed by the video for Pat Benatar’s “You Better Run”.
  • In the years since its inception, MTV has significantly toned down its focus on music in favor of reality programming, there is really only one channel entirely devoted to music programming now 😉

1981 – August 1st, Rick Springfield started a two week run at #1 on the US singles chart with ‘Jessie’s Girl’.

  • It was written because Springfield had a major crush on a girl who already had a boyfriend.
  • It was about Gary’s girl, but Springfield thought that “Jessie’s Girl” sounded better.
  • It later won the singer a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
  • The song was at #1 when MTV launched on 1 August 1981.

1996 – July 30th, Sublime’s self-titled album is released.

  • Sublime is the third and final studio album by the American ska punk band.
  • Lead singer Bradley Nowell died of a heroin overdose two months earlier.
  • The record was hugely successful because of hits like “What I Got”, “Santeria”, and “Wrong Way”.
  • The album went on to sell over 5 million copies.

2010 – August 2nd, Arcade Fire released The Suburbs, their third studio album.

  • It’s lyrical content is inspired by band members Win and William Butler’s upbringing in a suburb of Houston.
  • Win Butler describes the overall sound of The Suburbs as “a mix of Depeche Mode and Neil Young”.
  • It won Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards.

2014 – August 2nd, Weird Al Yankovic’s Mandatory Fun goes to #1

  • Mandatory Fun gave the parody master his first chart-topping album.
  • It contains parodies of songs by Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke, Iggy Azalea, Lorde and Imagine Dragons.
  • Weird Al publicized the album by launching eight music videos online during the first week of the album release.
  • The album won the award for Best Comedy Album at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards.
  • It was Yankovic’s fourth career Grammy.

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