Also GNR's Use Your Illusion 1, come to think of it. ALL outsold my Garth Brooks. But OK, most of the singles from all those records were '92, so THAT'S the cool year, right? Top selling artist of 1992? Billy Ray fucking Cyrus. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

johnacecil.bsky.social • 23 days ago

Also GNR's Use Your Illusion 1, come to think of it. ALL outsold my Garth Brooks.

But OK, most of the singles from all those records were '92, so THAT'S the cool year, right?

Top selling artist of 1992?

Billy Ray fucking Cyrus.

Comments

taikonaut.bsky.social•23 days ago

I do wonder how much that was just the US though. I’ve never even heard a Cyrus song. I was 13 then and all I remember of that year is G’n’R and fucking idiots still listening MC Hammer

kikicurious.bsky.social•23 days ago

Heck, I never heard a Billy Ray Cyrus song till I was in my 30s. I was living in Boston back then, so maybe it's coastal vs. heartland, or something.

johnacecil.bsky.social•23 days ago

I'm very sure it's that when you're in your 20s, college and just out of, you tend to self-segregate with people into the same shit as you. So mass popular stuff gets filtered out in a way it can't when you're surrounded by whoever shares a school zone with you.

johnacecil.bsky.social•23 days ago

Like, my gut tells me that NKOTB was just as big as, say, The Backstreet Boys. Cuz when I was high school NKOTB seemed omnipresent. I was in college and after when Backstreet was around. But the latter's biggest record sold 24 million records and the former's sold 10 million.

johnacecil.bsky.social•23 days ago

But I was never surrounded by Backstreet fans the way I was forced to share classrooms with NKOTB fans.

kikicurious.bsky.social•22 days ago

I mean, back then radio was omnipresent. But the radio stations were regionally and culturally influenced.

It just goes back to how huge & heterogeneous the US is, I think.

johnacecil.bsky.social•23 days ago

A valid observation! Looking now, it seems that in the UK top seller was Bryan Adams (that song was everywhere here, too, but apparently Garth Brooks was everywhere-er).

1992 in the UK the single was "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston. So the UK wins there.

johnacecil.bsky.social•23 days ago

I'm using Billboard for the US stuff and a site called "UK-Charts" for the UK stuff, so who knows how accurate it is.

lindsayduff.bsky.social•23 days ago

Oh, Achy Breaky Heart was big in the UK too. Garth Brooks never made the jump across the Atlantic, though, or at least not with much impact on the charts. UK audiences could tolerate some pop-country as a novelty single, but not an album artist like Brooks, it seems.

johnacecil.bsky.social•23 days ago

Yeah, I have the vaguest of memories of a duet BRC did with Dolly Parton but other than that it's just the one song.

johnacecil.bsky.social•23 days ago

Never thought about it this way before: "I Will Always Love You," "Everything I Do" & "Teen Spirit" were not played on CMT. But "Low Places" & "Achy Breaky Heart" WERE played on MTV.

Like, those 2 motherfuckers were famous /outside my field of vision/ before I ever knew who the fuck they were.

mcmcgreevy.bsky.social•23 days ago

Can’t even pin that on the 9/11 jingoism that destroyed country music.