May 12: Lion King, Weird Al, Whitney, Chicago Bulls
Plus how Bo Jackson tried smelling porcupine a** to cure year-long hiccups
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
May 12th, 2023 • Issue 151
This week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
May 12th
1980 - Billy Joel’s single It’s Still Rock & Roll was released.
1982 - The USFL was formed.
1984 - Lionel Richie’s single Hello hit number one.
1985 - The New York Knicks won the first NBA Draft Lottery in dubious fashion.
1988 - The series finale aired of Max Headroom.
1989 - The last graffiti-covered NYC subway car was retired.
1989 - The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game was released for NES.
1993 - The series finale aired of The Wonder Years.
1994 - The series finale aired of In Living Color.
1994 - Pulp Fiction premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
1994 - Elton John’s single Can You Feel the Love Tonight was released.
Can You Feel the Love Tonight — which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song — was originally a comedy song that was almost cut from The Lion King.
Can You Feel the Love Tonight is the most decorated song from The Lion King (it won the Academy Award and a Grammy, and was a #4 hit) — but almost got cut from the movie. Because originally, Disney had it performed by Timon and Pumbaa with a much more comedic slant.
Elton John hated that version of the song, so Disney cut it… then, at the last minute, decided to rework it instead. Timon and Pumbaa were moved to the intro of the song only, the lions had a few lines, and most of the singing went to a third-party non-character female singing voice.
1995 - Crimson Tide hit theaters.
2000 - Battlefield Earth and Screwed both hit theaters.
2001 - S Club 7’s one hit, Never Had a Dream Come True, peaked at number 10.
May 13th
1976 - Breakout was released for Atari.
1981 - Pope John Paul II was shot.
1989 - Bon Jovi’s single I’ll Be There for You hit number one.
1990 - The season finale of the first season of The Simpsons aired on FOX.
1991 - Yankees fans sang Like a Virgin to Jose Canseco to mock his relationship with Madonna.
1993 - The series finale aired of Knots Landing.
1994 - The Crow hit theaters.
1994 - Scottie Pippen pouted while Toni Kukoc hit a game winning shot for the Chicago Bulls.
1994 - Johnny Carson made his final TV appearance, on Late Night with David Letterman.
1995 - Martin Page’s one hit, In the House of Stone and Light, peaked at number 14.
1995 - The Rednex’s one hit, Cotton Eye Joe, peaked at number 25.
1996 - No Mercy’s single Where Do You Go was released.
1996 - Oasis’s single Champagne Supernova was released.
The meaning behind Oasis’s Champagne Supernova is… nothing
What is a “champagne supernova”? According to Noel Gallagher… he never decided. When the song came out on the album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? in 1995, he said in an interview the phrase “means different things when I’m in different moods.”
He repeated that ambiguity in interviews a decade-and-a-half later, going with his standard deflection of bragging instead. “When you’ve got 60,000 people singing it, they don’t know what it means… it means something different to every one of them.”
May 14th
1981 - Boston defeated Houston to win the NBA Championship.
1982 - Conan the Barbarian hit theaters.
1983 - Thomas Dolby’s one hit, She Blinded Me with Science, peaked at number five.
1988 - Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine’s single Anything for You hit number one.
1989 - The series finale aired of Family Ties.
1989 - The series finale aired of Moonlighting.
1991 - Paula Abdul’s album Spellbound was released.
1992 - Lyle Alzado passed away.
1994 - Big Mountain’s one hit, Baby I Love Your Way, peaked at number six.
1995 - The WWF held its first In Your House pay per view.
1996 - Donna Lewis’s single I Love You Always Forever was released.
1996 - Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas were married.
1997 - The series finale aired of Coach.
1997 - Aqua’s single Barbie Girl was released.
1998 - The Seinfeld series finale aired on NBC.
1998 - Frank Sinatra passed away.
Rescue crews were able to get Frank Sinatra to the emergency room in a shockingly fast time after his heart attack… because so many people were watching the Seinfeld finale.
Frank Sinatra had his heart attack at 9:14 P.M. on May 14th, 1998, as the Seinfeld series finale was airing on NBC. The Beverly Hills fire department was able to get to his house in four minutes, perform emergency treatment, and have him in the E.R. at 9:35 P.M.
The Beverly Hills fire chief attributed their speed to the absence of traffic due to so many people in Los Angeles being inside at that time, watching Seinfeld.
Of course, it sadly wasn’t enough to save Frank Sinatra, who passed away at 10:50 P.M. that evening at age 82.
1998 - George Michael plead no contest to committing a lewd act in a public bathroom.
1998 - Celebrity Deathmatch premiered on MTV.
2001 - The series finale aired of Baywatch.
2003 - The series finale aired of Dawson’s Creek.
May 15th
1981 - The Harlem Globetrotters made-for-TV Gilligan’s Island movie aired.
The Gilligan’s Island - Harlem Globetrotters crossover was originally supposed to be a Gilligan’s Island - Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders crossover.
The Gilligan’s Island - Harlem Globetrotter’s crossover was a made-for-TV movie, one of three that took place after the castaways were rescued, then went back to the island to set up a resort. So that’s where the team from Lost came up with the concept of never being able to truly leave the island.
Anyway, the original plan was for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to wind up staying on the island. But they weren’t available and the Harlem Globetrotters were, so the Gilligan’s Island team had to rewrite the script.
Considering the plot involves a climactic basketball game against a team of hooping robots, controlled by an evil hotel developer who wants to take over the island resort — and the only way to beat those robots is to fool them with trick shots — seems like there were a lot of rewrites.
1981 - SCTV debuted on NBC.
1982 - Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s single Ebony and Ivory hit number one.
1984 - The San Diego Clippers moved to Los Angeles.
1985 - Prince’s single Raspberry Beret was released.
1987 - The series finale of The Late Show with Joan Rivers aired on FOX.
1987 - Ishtar hit theaters.
1990 - Snap’s album World Power was released.
1990 - Mariah Carey’s single Vision of Love was released.
1992 - Lethal Weapon 3 hit theaters.
1993 - Janet Jackson’s single That’s the Way Love Goes hit number one.
1997 - Amazon went public.
1997 - Norm Macdonald and Courtney Thorne-Smith had a legendary exchange on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
1999 - Everlast’s one hit, What It’s Like, peaked at number 13.
1999 - Tracy Morgan’s character Brian Fellows debuted on SNL.
2001 - R. Kelly and Jay-Z’s single Fiesta was released.
2003 - The Matrix Reloaded hit theaters.
May 16th
1981 - Kim Carnes’ single Bette Davis Eyes hit number one.
1983 - The Motown 25 special featuring Michael Jackson’s first moonwalk aired on NBC.
1984 - Prince’s single When Doves Cry was released.
1984 - Andy Kaufman passed away, although people doubted it for decades.
1985 - Michael Jordan won the NBA’s Rookie of the Year.
1986 - Top Gun hit theaters.
1986 - Bobby Ewing returned from the dead on Dallas.
1987 - U2’s single With or Without You hit number one.
1990 - Sammy Davis Jr. passed away.
1990 - Jim Henson passed away.
1990 - After 7’s single Can’t Stop was released.
1992 - Weird Al Yankovic had a rare top 40 hit when Smells Like Nirvana hit number 35.
Weird Al has only had three top 40 hits in his 40+ year career.
He reached number 12 with Eat It in 1984… number 35 with Smells Like Nirvana in 1992… and number 9 with White & Nerdy in 2006.
1998 - The series finale aired of Unsolved Mysteries.
2000 - The Artist Formerly Known As Prince went back to being called Prince.
2000 - Britney Spears’ album Oops... I Did It Again was released.
2002 - Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones hit theaters.
May 17th
1977 - The first Chuck E. Cheese opened.
1980 - Peter Criss left KISS.
1986 - Whitney Houston’s single Greatest Love of All hit number one.
Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All was a cover of the title track to a Muhammad Ali biopic.
Nearly a decade before Whitney Houston’s version of the song became a huge hit, George Benson recorded the song — under the title The Greatest Love of All — for a 1977 Muhammad Ali biopic called The Greatest. The song played over the opening credits and made it to number 24 on the Billboard charts.
Whitney Houston wanted to record a cover for her debut album and, though Arista Records’ founder Clive Davis originally resisted, he eventually gave in. It was the seventh single off the album and became her third number one.
1990 - Kelsey Grammer received a 30-day jail sentence for driving while intoxicated.
1991 - What About Bob? hit theaters.
1993 - Intel’s Pentium processor was released.
1993 - Alan Jackson’s single Chattahoochee was released.
1994 - Lisa Loeb’s single Stay was released.
1997 - Freak Nasty’s one hit, Da Dip, peaked at number 15.
2000 - The Eagles sued Hotel California restaurant in Texas.
2000 - The series finale aired of Beverly Hills, 90210.
2000 - In a very Web 1.0 era story, Terra Networks and Lycos merged.
2002 - About a Boy hit theaters.
May 18th
1980 - Mount St. Helens exploded.
1985 - Simple Minds’ single Don’t You (Forget About Me) hit number one.
1991 - The Divinyls’ one hit, I Touch Myself, peaked at number four.
1991 - Hi-Five’s single I Like the Way (The Kissing Game) hit number one.
1992 - Sister Souljah’s controversial quote about killing white people appeared in the Washington Post.
1993 - Janet Jackson’s album janet was released.
1994 - Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley were married.
1995 - The Orlando Magic eliminated the Chicago Bulls from the NBA Playoffs.
Michael Jordan only lost one playoff series during the Chicago Bulls’ six championship run in the ‘90s.
The Bulls lost in the 1995 Eastern Conference Finals to the Orlando Magic, Jordan’s only playoff series loss amidst the six championship run.
The playoff loss came at the end of the season where Jordan returned from his failed baseball experiment with only 17 games left in the NBA regular season.
Orlando would lose to the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals, and the Bulls would sweep Orlando the following year in the Eastern Conference Finals en route to winning the championship.
1996 - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s single Tha Crossroads hit number one.
1998 - The series finale aired of Murphy Brown.
1999 - The Backstreet Boys album Millennium was released.
2001 - Moulin Rouge hit theaters.
2001 - Shrek hit theaters.
2002 - Wrestler Davey Boy Smith (aka the British Bulldog) died at age 39.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
Dual sport athlete and Tecmo Bowl legend Bo Jackson says he’s been suffering from hiccups since last July and he’s now having a medical procedure done to cure him. “I have done everything: Scare me, hang upside down, drink water, smell the [a**] of a porcupine. It doesn’t work.”
Beetlejuice 2 has a release date: September 6th, 2024. It will be in theaters, not direct to streaming.
As part of layoffs at Paramount, MTV News is no more. After nearly four decades, MTV is no longer going to have anyone in its news department and no news on air.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame announced its 2023 inductees. Only one of the four is from the time frame of this newsletter… and that game is 1996’s Barbie Fashion Designer.
Sum 41 announced they’re breaking up and I saw way more people talking about it online than you’d expect, all things considered.
Michael J. Fox says the ‘80s were so crazy for him, “I dated Susanna Hoffs from The Bangles, and I can’t even remember it.”
Fran Drescher is angling for a 30th anniversary reunion of The Nanny this November.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
In honor of the 25th anniversaries of Deep Impact and Armageddon, NASA scientists have weighed in on which film was more realistic.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
With the New York Knicks and Miami Heat facing off in the NBA playoffs, here’s a retrospective on their brutal rivalry from the ‘90s — featuring quotes and clips that have been forgotten over time. There was a whole lot more to this thing than just Jeff Van Gundy wrapping himself around Alonzo Mourning’s leg.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
In honor of the Writers Guild strike, here’s a real truth behind the “Who Jackie?” myth — a tall tale of Hollywood writers’ rooms that’s been passed around for three decades.
Have a great week!
-Sam