MCLEAN, VA. (Top40 Charts/ USA TODAY PR) - USA TODAY turns 25 years young this September, and to continue the celebration, The Nation's Newspaper will look back at the Top 25
Music Milestones.
In 1982, ABBA disbanded, Public Enemy formed and Ozzy Osbourne bit off a bat's head. In the 25 years since, music has undergone cataclysmic changes. USA TODAY has picked 25 top milestones; share your choices at USATODAY.com.
Every week for 25 weeks, USA TODAY will offer an exclusive color page of Top 25 anniversary memories - 25 lists over 25 weeks designed to spark conversation and debates. The Top 25 conversation continues today with the Top 25 Music Milestones. Here are the top 10:
1. Napster (1999)
Shawn Fanning's file-sharing service, the first significant peer-to- peer music trading system, sparked a firestorm, prompting lawsuits from Metallica, Dr. Dre and major labels before a court order shut it down in 2001. Napster, later rebranded as a pay service, went belly up. Due partly to piracy, the music industry isn't that healthy either.
2. Live Aid (1985)
The enormous benefit concert, staged largely in London and Philadelphia for 1.5 billion TV viewers, raised $245 million for famine relief in Ethiopia, canonized organizer Bob Geldof and unleashed a glittery rock revue starring Paul McCartney, Queen, Madonna, U2 and scores more.
3. Michael Jackson on MTV (1983)
The R&B wunderkind broke the color barrier at the nascent music channel and blazed the trail for video innovation when Beat It, a nod to West Side Story, premiered in March. The epic zombie-themed Thriller followed in December.
4. N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton (1988)
Gangsta rap exploded in violent, explicit street stories, including the widely banned F-- Tha Police, fueling hip-hop's mainstream popularity and intensifying censorship debates and a culture war.
5. Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
Nirvana's punk anthem brought alternative rock to the fore and heralded the grunge movement's tsunami of Seattle bands from Soundgarden to Pearl Jam, rock's counteroffensive to big hair metal. Kurt Cobain's 1994 suicide created a Gen X martyr.
6. iPods and iTunes (2001)
Technology allowed tailor-made playlists, and music became less of a communal experience as buyers cherry-picked vast online reservoirs and listened in isolation. Sales patterns reveal fewer superstars and a long tail of niche artists.
7. Radiohead (1997)
The most significant and influential British group of the era risked "commercial suicide," according to its label, with the release of 1997's OK Computer, an experimental pastiche of ambient electronica, art-rock and post-punk that by 2005 was declared the No. 1 album of the past 20 years in Spin.
8. 'N Sync (2000)
While Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and the Spice Girls enjoyed the spoils of the teen-pop trend, nobody scaled the charts like 'N Sync, whose bouncy No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million copies its first week, pop music's biggest opener ever.
9. Purple Rain (1984)
Already a star, Prince reached the stratosphere with the semi- autobiographical film and Oscar-winning soundtrack that yielded such indelible hits as When Doves Cry and Let's Go Crazy.
10. SoundScan (1991)
The information system that tracks music sales altered the industry by revealing true data and replacing an inexact store-calling method tainted by errors and fraud.
Find the full list in today's editions of USA TODAY and on https://www.USATODAY.com. A new Top 25 list will run every week through September 10th.
USA TODAY, the nation's top-selling newspaper, will be celebrating its 25th anniversary on September 15th, 2007. It is published via satellite at 36 locations in the USA and at four sites abroad. With a total average daily circulation of 2.3 million, USA TODAY is available worldwide. USA TODAY is published by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI). The USA TODAY brand also includes: USATODAY.com, an award-winning news and information Web site that is updated 24 hours per day; USA TODAY Sports Weekly, a magazine for enthusiasts of professional football and baseball; and USA TODAY LIVE, the television arm of the USA TODAY brand that brings the spirit and quality of the newspaper to television.
