July 2: Baby Got Back, Goblet of Fire, Men in Black
Plus Coolio leads the charge on Canon on D covers
The Retro
by 11 Points
Modern perspectives on ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia
July 2nd, 2021 • Issue 54
This week in nostalgic history
July 2nd
24 years ago, on July 2nd, 1997 - Men in Black hit theaters.
Academy Award-winning film Men in Black (yes, really, it won Best Makeup I guess in part for the alien with realistic human testicles on its chin) was Will Smith’s second-straight alien-fighting 4th of July weekend blockbuster. In 1996, he starred in Independence Day and, in the process, established himself as both a go-to box office megastar and alien buster. So in 1997, we got the comedy iteration with Men in Black.
Will Smith was all-in (he even started his sadly short-lived tradition of creating glorious rap tracks to accompany his movies) and the film, created to be a mega hit, was, in fact, a mega hit.
The movie would produce two sequels, both with Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, and both also huge hits. (Men in Black 3 was, surprisingly, the highest grossing of the three.) It also produced a recent spinoff in Men in Black: International which wasn’t such a big hit; perhaps the movies needed the chemistry of the original cast more than predicted.
In spite of the disappointing performance of the spinoff, I’d guess we haven’t seen the last of the Men in Black franchise. And of course, we all continue to wait with bated breath to see if Jonah Hill’s 21 Jump Street/Men in Black crossover will come to fruition.
Also on July 2nd: The Susan B. Anthony dollar was released (1979)… Airplane! hit theaters (1980)… a guy strapped balloons to his lawn chair and flew for an hour (1982)… Steffi Graf won at Wimbledon, breaking Martina Navratilova’s six-year streak (1988)… Michael Jackson became the first artist with five number one singles from the same album when Dirty Diana hit number one (1988)… Boyz n the Hood hit theaters (1991)… Axl Rose started a riot when he jumped off stage at a concert in St. Louis to attack a fan (1991)… The Firm and Pauly Shore’s Son-in-Law hit theaters (1993)… Bill Gates was named the richest person in the world for the first time (1995)… OpenTable was founded (1998)… Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets was released in the U.K. (1998)… the original version of Napster officially shut down (2001)
July 3rd
32 years ago, on July 3rd, 1989 - The New Kids on the Block single Hangin’ Tough was released.
Hangin’ Tough had an odd journey as a single. It was the fourth single released off the New Kids on the Block’s second album… an album *called* Hangin’ Tough. The single’s release date here was almost a full year after the album’s release.
So what gives? Why was the title track from the album, and the track that would go on to be the best seller (it was the only platinum song, and one of two number one hits), held back? It seems like it was a symptom of… New Kids on the Block having two tracks that sounded really similar on the album.
Hangin’ Tough sounded more than a little like You Got It (The Right Stuff), which was the second single released from the album. (The first was the ballad Please Don’t Go Girl). I’d speculate the record label and various boy band marionettists behind the scenes felt like there needed to be a buffer between the two singles, so they went with I’ll Be Loving You (Forever).
Ultimately, though, the order was immaterial. By the time Hangin’ Tough was released as a single, NKOTB was so big they could’ve put out singles of the guys doing ASMR Pringles eating and sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Also on July 3rd: Don’t You Want Me by the Human League hit number one (1982)… Back to the Future hit theaters (1985)… Adventures in Babysitting hit theaters (1987)... Terminator 2: Judgment Day hit theaters (1991)... Independence Day hit theaters (1996)... Whitney Houston's single My Love Is Your Love was released (1999)... infamous video game star Billy Mitchell achieved the first perfect score ever on Pac-Man (1999)… Real World: Back to New York premiered (2001)… the '90s NBA expansion team the Vancouver Grizzlies moved to Memphis (2001)
July 4th
29 years ago, on July 4th, 1992 - Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Sir Mix-a-Lot is a one-hit wonder with a (borderline) novelty song, but is a bit different than a lot of the one-hit wonders of the era and the other one-hit wonders I’ve written about in The Retro. Unlike many other novelty song one-hit wonders, Sir Mix-a-Lot didn’t completely change his style or musical philosophy or “sell out” for his one hit. (This isn’t anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba with Tubthumping here.) Baby Got Back was right in line with everything Sir Mix-a-Lot did musically. The song just so happened to become way, way more popular than anything he’d done before, or anything he’s done since.
Baby Got Back was a number one hit, won the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance, and essentially kept Sir Mix-a-Lot well paid and famous for more than a quarter century and counting. The lesson, of course, is be true to thyself, even if being true to thyself involves a magnum opus where thy rap atop a pair of giant buttocks.
Also on July 4th: Ozzy Osbourne married his manager, Sharon Arden (1982)… two very different but memorable movies, Big Trouble in Little China and The Great Mouse Detective, hit theaters (1984)... Mr. T played the drums for the Beach Boys in concert (1985)… Pete Sampras won Wimbledon for the first time (1993)... Deep Blue Something's single Breakfast at Tiffany's was released (1995)… Hotmail debuted (1996)… Destiny Child’s single Jumpin’ Jumpin’ was released (2000)… Takeru Kobayashi won his first hot dog eating contest (2001)
July 5th
30 years ago, on July 5th, 1991 - The Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins were officially approved as MLB expansion teams.
The Marlins would go on to ruin baseball, specifically the 1997 season, but the Rockies seem pretty cool.
Major League Baseball hasn’t expanded much in our lifetimes. The league has only added four teams since 1980, and this was the first pair. (The second pair was Arizona and Tampa in 1998.)
The NBA has added eight teams in that 40-year window; the NFL has also added four; and the NHL has added 10, with an 11th coming soon.
Even the Canadian Football League has added more new expansion teams in the U.S. than MLB; they added six between 1993 and 1995. All are now gone, but still.
Also on July 5th: Seinfeld premiered on NBC (1989)… Weekend at Bernie’s was released (1989)… Blossom premiered on NBC (1990)... Bjork’s debut album was released (1993)… Hootie & the Blowfish's album Cracked Rear View was released (1994)... Warren G’s single This DJ was released (1994)… Jeff Bezos founded Amazon (1994)... the movie Phenomenon was released (1996)… Eric Clapton’s single Change the World was released (1996)… Dolly the Sheep was born (1996)
July 6th
30 years ago, on July 6th, 1991 - Marc Cohn's only hit, Walking in Memphis, peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Marc Cohn is from my hometown in Ohio and came to my high school for an assembly my junior year, so I’ve always had a soft spot for him. (And yes, during the assembly, he did perform Walking in Memphis with parody lyrics for our town.)
Although often reduced to a one-hit wonder, Cohn has had quite a 30-year span. He won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1992 (beating out the chef’s kiss field of Boyz II Men, C+C Music Factory, Color Me Badd, and Seal). He spent 12 years married to ABC News anchor Elizabeth Vargas. In 2005, he was shot in the head during a carjacking but miraculously was only hospitalized for eight hours. And he’s still performing, touring, and living the life today; just two years ago, he played Carnegie Hall. And he never danced atop a giant pair of buttocks.
Also on July 6th: Phil Collins’s single Sussudio was released (1985)… Die Hard 2 and Jetsons: The Movie hit theaters (1990)... Forrest Gump hit theaters (1994)… Alanis Morissette’s single You Oughta Know was released (1995)
July 7th
24 years ago, on July 7th, 1997 - Coolio’s single C U When U Get There was released.
There have been lots of pop songs that use the chord progression of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Some might even say most pop songs do (one comedy rock plays a medley featuring more than 30 such songs, and that was more than a decade ago and far from the entire list).
But never was the intersection of Pachelbel’s Canon and pop music more pronounced than the late ‘90s, when two songs dropped all pretense and were really just Canon with a beat. Coolio was the first, on this day releasing C U When U Get There. Vitamin C’s Graduation (Friends Forever) would come soon after. In a nice coincidence, both songs peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100; many songs that use Canon less blatantly have risen far higher, which should be a good takeaway for all future pop music songwriters.
Also on July 7th: Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court (1981)… Prince’s single When Doves Cry hit number one (1984)… Lethal Weapon 2 hit theaters (1989)... Dream On premiered on HBO (1990)... the first Three Tenors concert was held in Rome (1990)… the mp3 format, then called I3enc, was released (1994)... Real McCoy’s single Run Away was released (1994)… Lauryn Hill's single Doo Wop (That Thing) was released (1998)… Scary Movie was released (2000)
July 8th
21 years ago, on July 8th, 2000 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released worldwide.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was the fourth Harry Potter book, and one that marked two milestones.
One, it was the first book in the series released everywhere worldwide on the same day; the previous three received much earlier U.K. release dates than U.S. release dates. By 2000, however, Harry Potter had achieved such monolithic status that a simultaneous release was the only option.
And two, it marked the moment when J.K. Rowling became too powerful as an author and could no longer really be edited. The first three Harry Potter books were ~77,000, ~85,000, and ~107,000 words, respectively. This fourth book? More than 190,000 words.
Length aside, Goblet of Fire was a really strong fourth book in the series. It broke the pattern of the first few books (a year at school where there’s a mysterious evil force afoot who would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids) and expanded the universe from the U.K. to the world at large with the wizarding tournament. (That also provided the intersection between the Harry Potter and Twilight universes once Goblet of Fire became a movie with Robert Pattinson playing a key role.)
Goblet of Fire would be the biggest hit to date on an up-and-coming online bookstore called Amazon, which broke all sorts of records with 410,000 pre-orders (8x the number of pre-orders for the prior Harry Potter book). Amazon also noted about one in 10 copies of Goblet of Fire sold worldwide were sold by Amazon.
Three years later, when the fifth Harry Potter book was released and both Harry Potter and Amazon were even larger cultural forces, Amazon would ship 1.3 million pre-ordered copies of the book. All 257,000 words of it.
Also on July 8th: Fine Young Cannibal’s single Good Thing hit number one (1989)… West Germany won the World Cup (1990)... the series finale of Mr. Belvedere aired on ABC (1990)… Melrose Place premiered on FOX (1992)... Better Than Ezra's Good peaked at number 30 (1995)... the first CFL game was played between two U.S. teams (1995)… TLC’s Waterfalls hit number one (1995)… Wannabe by the Spice Girls was released in the U.K. (1996)... Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, the final Harry Potter book to get separate U.K. and international release dates, came out in the U.K. (1999)… Real World: New Orleans premiered on MTV (2000)
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news.
Seinfeld is getting its first-ever soundtrack. It’s a 33-song collection of music from the show and it comes out tomorrow.
A rumor spread like crazy on social media yesterday that Biz Markie had died — his manager announced last night it wasn’t true and he’s still quite alive.
Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit just became the second ‘90s song to hit one billion streams on Spotify. The first was Oasis’s Wonderwall back in October.
Reebok just launched its new line of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers sneakers.
Kelsey Grammer says the Frasier revival will come to Paramount+ “probably in the first quarter of next year.”
Nick Offerman has signed on to the A League of Their Own TV reboot.
Netflix opened up a ‘90 throwback video store pop up to promote Fear Street.
The Smithsonian is going to release a nine-CD, 129-song collection of the history of hip-hop. The Smithsonian you say?
Amazon is hopping on the rise of vinyl collecting with a Vinyl of the Month Club.
Throwbacks and recommendations
In honor of Mel Brooks’s 95th birthday, The Wrap ranked the 11 Mel Brooks movies from best to worst. Their order is mostly terrible. Some other website that makes 11-item lists oughta dust off the mothballs to set things right.
Two dudes paid homage to Dumb and Dumber by literally recreating the guys’ minibike road trip from Nebraska to Aspen.
Billboard put together a list of the 100 greatest car songs of all time.
Someone made a word processor that plays Sublime’s What I Got while you type and stops the song when you pause.
Thanks for reading!
-Sam