This Week In Rock History: The Beatles Call It Quits and the Ramones Begin

March 31st, 1994 - Madonna goes nuts on Letterman

It's hard to say what exactly got Madonna so riled up when she appeared on Late Night With David Letterman in March of 1994. It's possible Letterman got things off to a bad start before she even got onstage. "Our first guest tonight is one of the biggest stars in the world," he said. "In the past 10 years, she has sold over 80 million albums, starred in countless films and slept with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry." Within one minute of taking the couch Madonna called Letterman a "sick fuck." It was the first of 14 f-bombs. "You realize this is being broadcast, don't you?" a slightly shocked Letterman replied.  Things went downhill from there and the incident went down as one of the most famous moments in Letterman history.

March 29th, 2000 - N'Sync shatter Soundscan record

Nobody knew it at the time, but the music industry peaked on March 29th, 2000. That was the day that Soundscan announced that N'Sync's 2000 LP No Strings Attached sold 2.42 million albums in its first week of release. The album's single "Bye Bye Bye" was a massive hit and boy band mania had reached a peak. Right around this time teenagers across the country started downloading a new program called Napster, and very quickly paying $18 for a CD at the mall seemed like a relic of the distant past. "I remember that week," Lance Bass told Rolling Stone in 2009. "The whole thing was a competition with the Backstreet Boys because they did a million in a week. "We're like, 'There's no way we can do a million in a week are you kidding me?' Then the label called and they're like 'You did a million in a day.'" It was a nutty, nutty time. It's an amazing feeling that we'll go down in history."

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Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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