The History of Alt Rock Chapter: 14
To fans of any kind of rock, may 18, 1999, seemed like the end of the world...the Backstreet Boys released their new cd called\xa0Millennium...on that first day, it sold more than 500,000 copies...by the end of the week, it had sold 1,134,000, a new all-time sales record...\nAnd those are just the u.s. Numbers...add in the rest of the world and the total was much higher...\nAnd it was only going to get twice as bad...just 308 days later, \u2018N sync\u2013another blood boy band\u2013set an even scarier record...by the end of its first week in the stores, their\xa0No Strings Attached\xa0sold 2.4 million copies...\nAnd just 56 days after that, Britney Spears sold half a million copies of\xa0Oops!...I Did It Again\xa0on day one and 1,319,193 in its first seven days....\nWhen the dust cleared at the end of 2000, it was clear that vacuous pop music had taken over the universe...these CDs weren\u2019t just selling by the tens of millions....they were selling by the hundreds of millions...\nIn second place was rap and hip-hop, thanks to people like Eminem, Nelly and Dr. Dre...the biggest selling rock records of the year were from Sreed, Santana and a Beatles r compilation that featured songs that were more than 35 years old...\nThe prognosis wasn\u2019t good...if rock\u2013all rock\u2013wasn\u2019t dead, it was at least very, very ill...and unless somebody did something, it looked like it was all over...\nThis is chapter 14 of the complete history of alt-rock...\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices