This Week in Music History | October 19 – 25

October 18, 2020

Posted in: This Week in Music History

This week in music history, we’re celebrating the release of some of the most legendary albums ever released. From the iconic live album from James Brown Live At The Apollo, to Tom Petty’s breakthrough Damn the Torpedoes to Taylor Swift’s debut, get all the information that you need to know below!

1962 – October 24th, US Soul singer James Brown recorded his legendary Live At The Apollo album.

  • The album comes in at barely half an hour long.
  • Brown’s vocal group, The Fabulous Flames co-starred on the album.
  • The album was listed at #24 in Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

1968 – October 25th, The double album Electric Ladyland by the The Jimi Hendrix Experience was released.

  • The double album was the only record by the band produced by Hendrix.
  • The female models on the cover of the album were paid £5 for the photo shoot and another £5 if they posed completely naked.
  • It was available as two albums with changed artwork after complaints about the naked women who were pictured on the sleeve.
  • Electric Ladyland included a cover of the Bob Dylan song “All Along the Watchtower”, which became the Experience’s best-selling single.
  • Most critics agree that the album was “the fullest realization of Jimi’s far-reaching ambitions.”

1976 – October 22nd, Bob Seger releases Night Moves, his first studio album to make an impact outside of Michigan.

  • Night Moves included three charting singles ‘Rock & Roll Never Forgets’, ‘Night Moves’, and ‘Mainstreet’.
  • While Night Moves was Seger’s 9th studio album, it was the 1st studio album to credit The Silver Bullet Band.
  • The album received the saucy sounding distinction of being certified sextuple platinum.

1977 – October 21st, Meat Loaf releases the landmark album Bat Out Of Hell.

  • It was his first collaboration with composer Jim Steinman and producer Todd Rundgren
  • It’s one of the best-selling albums of all time, having sold over 43 million copies worldwide.
  • It spawned two sequel albums: Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose.
  • A musical based on Bat Out of Hell opened at the Manchester Opera House on February 17, 2017.

1979 – October 19th, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album, Damn The Torpedoes.

  • The album was a breakthrough for Petty and the Heartbreakers.
  • It was their first top 10 album rising to #2 for seven weeks and kept from #1 by Pink Floyd’s The Wall on the Billboard albums chart.
  • Tom Petty’s response to being anchored at #2 was “I love Pink Floyd but I hated them that year”.
  • ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ and ‘Refugee’ made the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
  • Thanks to the new co-producer Jimmy Iovine, Damn the Torpedoes proved to be a major leap forward in production.

2006 – October 23rd, My Chemical Romance released their wildly popular third album, The Black Parade.

  • It was recorded during the band’s stay at the notoriously haunted Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles.
  • The album is a rock opera centering on a dying character with cancer known as “The Patient”.
  • It tells the story of his apparent death, experiences in the afterlife, and subsequent reflections on his life.
  • “It combines the rock-opera pomp of Queen with the darker, dirtier tones of their screamo past: Call it a Bro-hemian Rhapsody.”

2006 – October 24th, Taylor Swift released her self-titled debut studio album.

  • She wrote the songs during her freshman year of high school and was 16 years old at the time of the album’s release.
  • It went on to top the Country Albums Chart for 24 non-consecutive weeks, selling over seven million copies.
  • It became the longest-charting album on the Billboard 200 of the 2000s decade, remaining there for 277 weeks in total.
  • ‘Our Song’ made Swift the youngest person in history to single-handedly write and perform a #1 song on the Hot Country Songs chart.

Music is back on TV. Only on AXS TV.
Follow AXS TV on Facebook and Twitter.
Find AXS TV on your TV.

Tags: , , , , , ,