Alanis Ties For Highest-Selling Debut Ever

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Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill (Maverick/Warner Bros.) and Garth Brooks' No Fences (Capitol Nashville) were both certified for U.S. sales of 16 million by the RIAA in July.

Morissette's 1995 bow is now tied with Boston's self-titled 1976 album as the best-selling debut of all time; the Morissette and Brooks albums are locked with the soundtrack for The Bodyguard as the top-selling album of the decade.

No Fences is the biggest country album of all time, according to the RIAA.

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Song Stories

“Karma Chameleon”

Culture Club | 1983

Boy George has said this song was about standing by what you believe in. However, at the time, he was involved in a secret affair with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. "Now people can understand the songs better," he said. "They were written about my relationship with Jon, and they were also written about being a gay man in a homophobic world." The lines "If I listen to your lies, would you say/I'm a man without conviction/I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction," described his life at the time, he said. "I was selling this big lie."

More Song Stories entries »

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