Dec 23: Do the Bartman, Mariah Carey, Legends of the Fall
Plus A Muppet Family Christmas, Titanic theories, and more
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
December 23rd, 2022 • Issue 131
This week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
December 23rd
28 years ago, on December 23rd, 1994, Legends of the Fall hit theaters.
Legends of the Fall was a fairly forgettable movie. (I saw it in theaters and the only thing I remember is the projector breaking midway through.)
So its enduring legacy lies more in what it did for Brad Pitt’s career than the story it told.
Even in its time, most critics noted Pitt’s performance — specifically as the moment when he went from “handsome guy in movies” to actual movie star. Or, even more than that, actual actor.
Before Legends of the Fall, the Brad Pitt career trajectory was a coin flip. He got a smattering of praise for his acting in A River Runs Through It in 1992… but in Interview with a Vampire in 1994, sentiment swung back to “oh, he’s just going to get by on his looks.”
Legends of the Fall was the tiebreaker… and broke Pitt’s way.
And the self-fulfilling prophecy did, in fact, fulfill itself; Pitt’s next movie was Seven, where he showed off his acting and his ability to drive box office as a headliner.
1987 - Good Morning, Vietnam hit theaters.
1987 - Gerald Ford attempted assassin Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme escaped from prison.
1992 - Scent of a Woman hit theaters.
1994 - Street Fighter hit theaters.
1994 - Whitey Bulger escaped from Boston to begin 16 years on the run.
1997 - As Good As It Gets hit theaters.
2000 - ECW held its final event at the ECW Arena in Philadelphia.
December 24th
1955 - NORAD began tracking Santa.
1988 - Poison’s single Every Rose Has Its Thorn hit number one.
1990 - Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman got married.
1993 - Tombstone hit theaters.
1997 - Woody Allen married Soon-Yi Previn.
2001 - Time magazine named Rudy Giuliani its Person of the Year. Woof.
December 25th
29 years ago, on December 25th, 1993, Mariah Carey’s single Hero hit number one.
Hero was a soundtrack song not on a soundtrack, written for someone who wasn’t Mariah Carey. Yet here we are.
Rewinding to explain what all that means…
There was a movie in 1992 called Hero with Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis, and Andy Garcia.
Epic Records was producing the soundtrack and wanted its signature song to be a showstopper from Mariah Carey.
She couldn’t perform on the soundtrack for two reasons. One, even though Sony owned both her label, Columbia, and Epic, Columbia was too protective of early ‘90s Mariah to share. Even internally.
And two, her career was so micromanaged that her handlers wouldn’t let her do movie soundtracks, because they didn’t want her associated with a movie in case it bombed.
But Mariah was interested in the project, so all parties agreed she’d write a song for the soundtrack — to be performed by Gloria Estefan.
As she and her co-writer Walter Afanasieff worked on the song, her fiance/head of Sony Music, Tommy Mottola, heard her test version — and told her, basically, it was too good to give away. She had to record it herself. And… she did.
Meanwhile Gloria Estefan never knew any of the above happened. She wound up recording a song for the Hero soundtrack called Heart of a Hero, written by Luther Vandross.
Hero wound up becoming one of Mariah’s biggest hits and signature songs. It hit number one on this day, Christmas Day, 1993 and stayed on top for three weeks. It would wind up 53rd on Billboard’s ‘90s decade-end chart.
And, of course, it still gets rolled out for pretty much any montage that calls for a shmaltzy-but-addictive ballad — from Michael Jordan’s retirement to President Obama’s inauguration.
1990 - The Godfather: Part III hit theaters.
1992 - Chaplin and Hoffa both hit theaters.
1994 - The Jungle Book, IQ, and Ready to Wear hit theaters.
1996 - JonBenet Ramsey was killed.
1996 - The People vs. Larry Flynt and Evita hit theaters.
1997 - Jackie Brown and Wag the Dog hit theaters.
1998 - The Faculty hit theaters.
1998 - Richard Branson bailed on his attempt to sail a hot-air balloon around the world after seven days.
1999 - Galaxy Quest and The Talented Mr. Ripley hit theaters.
December 26th
1982 - Time magazine named the personal computer its Man of the Year.
1983 - The Iron Sheik defeated Bob Backlund to end Backlund’s six-year WWF World Championship reign.
1990 - The series finale of Cop Rock aired.
1992 - Wreckx-n-Effect’s one hit, Rump Shaker, peaked at number two.
1997 - Spice World premiered in the U.K.
December 27th
1986 - Timbuk 3’s one hit, The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades, peaked at number 19.
1989 - WWF aired a pay-per-view featuring Hulk Hogan’s movie No Holds Barred as well as a cage match featuring him against his co-star, Tiny Lister.
1991 - Fried Green Tomatoes and The Prince of Tides hit theaters.
1998 - Bill Goldberg’s 173-match winning streak ended when he lost to Kevin Nash at WCW Starrcade.
1999 - Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker gave an interview to Sports Illustrated filled with racist and homophobic statements.
2002 - Chicago hit theaters.
December 28th
1981 - The first test tube baby was born in the U.S..
1991 - Nine people were killed during a riot at a Puff Daddy-promoted hip-hop event.
1993 - Andrea Bocelli made his classical concert debut.
2000 - Montgomery Ward announced it was going out of business.
2001 - Black Hawk Down and I Am Sam hit theaters.
2002 - LinkedIn was founded.
December 29th
32 years ago, on December 29th, 1990, Do the Bartman, from The Simpsons Sing the Blues, peaked at number 24 on the Billboard charts.
Do the Bartman was the most successful single off The Simpsons Sing the Blues — an album the Simpsons team whipped up during the peak of early Simpsons mania.
And for three decades there’s been an enduring question about Do the Bartman: Did Michael Jackson write it?
Jackson was a big Simpsons fan and a fan of Bart in general (sigh). He’s name-checked in the song’s lyrics. He had a guest spot on the show in 1991.
When The Simpsons Sing the Blues came out, the song was credited to Bryan Loren, a friend of Michael Jackson.
But in 1998, during a speech by Simpsons creator Matt Groening at a convention, he said Jackson co-wrote the song. Jackson couldn’t receive credit for it, though, because he was under contract with Epic Records.
(Random second reference in this newsletter to the thorniness of Epic Records contracts in the ‘90s!)
Loren maintains to this day that he was the only writer; he says Jackson’s contributions to the song were as follows:
Background vocals
Coming up with the title
Requiring that the lyrics mention his name
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter — though if Michael Jackson had a more prominent association with the song, it’s possible it would’ve performed better than today’s #24 peak.
One thing we do know for sure: The second single off The Simpsons Sing the Blues was not co-written by Jackson. Because the unquestioned, unambiguous writing credits on Deep, Deep Trouble belong to Groening… and DJ Jazzy Jeff.
1982 - Jamaica issued a Bob Marley postage stamp.
1982 - Dolby released the first home surround sound system.
1989 - Wayne Gretzky and Martina Navratilova were named athletes of the decade by the Associated Press.
1993 - Todd Bridges was arrested for transporting drugs.
1995 - Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dead Man Walking, and 12 Monkeys all hit theaters.
1998 - Lenny Kravitz’s single Fly Away was released.
1998 - Mankind won the WWF Championship at a taped Monday Night Raw which would famously air the following week.
1999 - The Hurricane hit theaters.
5 ‘80s and ‘90s trivia facts
Mariah Carey recorded All I Want for Christmas Is You during the summer.
She recorded the song in August of 1994. The producers brought Christmas trees and lights into the studio to try to set the mood.
The movie What Lies Beneath was how Robert Zemeckis kept busy while Tom Hanks grew his beard for Cast Away.
It took two years to film Cast Away. They shot for two months in 1999… then had to wait more than a year for Tom Hanks to grow a giant beard and lose a bunch of weight. And in the time in between, director Robert Zemeckis took almost the entire crew to film the Harrison Ford/Michelle Pfeiffer movie What Lies Beneath.
At the peak of America Online in the ‘90s, half of the CDs produced worldwide were AOL free trial CDs.
The company spent more than $300 million on producing and mailing out CDs. It cost them around $35 to gain each new subscriber (which was 10% of the $350 average lifetime value of a customer).
Fireball Whiskey was created in the mid ‘80s under the brand name Dr. McGillicuddy’s Fireball Whiskey.
It was mostly sold in Canada. Seagram’s owned that line and sold the rights to the Sazerac Company in 1989. They rebranded it as Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey in 2007.
Nintendo was easier in Europe than the U.S.
For the original Nintendo to be compatible with European TVs (which use PAL, not NTSC, color encoding), they needed versions of the games that ran about 17% slower. That made the games a whole lot easier.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
We’re still talking about this… both James Cameron and Kate Winslet weighed in on the “Could Jack have survived too?” Titanic debate. And both are Team Death Was Inevitable. Cameron said he did a scientific test during filming with “two stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo” and there was no way both could float on the piece of wood. And Winslet says, “He could have fit on that door, but it would not have stayed afloat.”
The official trailer is out for That ‘90s Show, the That ‘70s Show revival that comes to Netflix on January 19th. This appears to be a Fuller House situation — a largely new cast, a few regulars from the original series, plus occasional cameos from the others.
Whitney Houston’s biopic is in theaters today and is not getting great reviews.
Netflix canceled its sitcom about Blockbuster after one season… and you kinda wonder if they made the show just to have this moment.
Here’s a mashup of the King of the Hill opening and N64-era Donkey Kong for “Kong of the Hill”.
Pokemon is replacing Ash Ketchum as the lead human in its media series for the first time since its 1997 debut.
The original mechatronic model for E.T. sold at auction for $2.56 million.
Atari is in financial trouble again, as it has been for most of the past four decades.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
In honor of this holiday season… the enduring legend of NINTENDO 64!!!
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
A Muppet Family Christmas, an hour-long special that aired on ABC in 1987, is finally back in full form. The show has been unavailable because of rights issues (Disney owns the Muppets, Apple owns the Fraggles, HBO owns the Sesames). Someone uploaded it to YouTube in its complete form — including its ‘80s commercials. Watch it before it’s gone.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
Not sure why this is so captivating — it’s four minutes of high-quality footage from a McDonald’s in 1992. Maybe it’s seeing all the vintage packaging and signage, or the rarity of such mundane footage from that era… but I watched the entire damn thing.
Have a great week!
-Sam