The 20 Million Club

The record company thought it might sell 50,000 copies if they were lucky. It went on to sell 30m. What was it about the darkness and anger of Nevermind that made it so successful?

The team look at some of the other songs in the charts the week of August 18, 1986: Dave Lee Roth's Yankee Rose, Bruce Hornsby & The Range smash The Way It Is and the neo-prog-pop of It Bites' Calling All The Heroes.

Peter Gabriel's chart-busting Sledgehammer was inescapable in August of 1986. But what was it about the ex-Genesis man's single that so caught the imagination on both sides of the Atlantic? Was it just its bonkers video? Or was there more to it? The team discuss…

In August 1996, the charts in the US and the UK were full of songs from the movies: Top Gun, The Breakfast Club, The Karate Kid, Pretty In Pink. But why?

In memory of Meat Loaf, we've reposted this celebration of his classic game-changing album, Bat Out Of Hell. Big, daft and loveable, with gloriously huge songs about teenage love and going-all-the-way, Bat Out Of Hell was an album that was both preposterous and actually very relatable. RIP marvellous Marvin Lee Aday, the mighty Meat Loaf. (This episode was recorded in February 2021.)

Nicky, Sian and Paul discuss Bon Jovi's hit record ‘Slippery When Wet', discussing how the band managed to straddle between hair metal and heavy rock, how they upset Metallica and also they managed to take a heavy style of music and successfully bring it in the radio rock mainstream - getting more audiences across the world to raise their hands.

In which Scott goes on an impassioned but barely comprehensible rant about why certain punk bands mean so much more than, say, More Than A Feeling can ever hope to mean.

In the charts, December '76, More Than A Feeling practically invented AOR and was an unlikely influence on grunge. But is it just a nice pop song?

Tonight's The Night was a US no.1 the week of Hotel California's release. Unbelievably, it's also the 19th biggest US single. We talk dodgy videos, the punk rock wars, comfy slacks and the source of THAT rumour about Rod.

How do you follow the best-selling album of the 20th century? By releasing the 5th best-selling original album, that's how. But the success of Hotel California brought a dark side: fist fights, scandals, arrests, and eventually genuine tragedy.FURTHER READING1991 GQ interview with Don Henley about his 1980 arresthttps://archive.li/Gk6spThe story of the death of Lana Rae Meisner, Randy Meisner's wife: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/wife-of-eagles-randy-meisner-shot-and-killed-investigation-ongoing-191471/https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/07/entertainment/randy-meisner-wife-shooting-feat/index.html

Was the mighty Scorps' Wind of Change part of a CIA plot to bring down communism? And more importantly, can you whistle it?

Was You Could Be Mine the moment GN'R sold out? (With apologies for the shonky audio on earlier version.)

Does Bryan Adams' six-minute syrupfest have any redeeming features?

Nicky Horne, Siân Llewellyn and Paul Elliot take a deep dive into Metallica's 'Metallica' - or the Black Album as it's commonly known. They look at the influence of the controversial appointment of Bob Rock behind the mixing desk, how fans still believe Metallica 'Sold out' and much more on the album which Lars Ulrich claims 'Keeps the pool heated'.

We couldn't choose just one more song from Feb 1977, so instead we delve into hits by Bob Seger, Manfred Mann, Status Quo, the Steve Miller Band and Kansas.

Thin Lizzy's Don't Believe A Word was released in November 1976 and hit a peak of no.12 in the UK the week that Rumours was released. How a falling out between Phil Lynott and guitarist Brian Robertson led to 2.18mins of killer riffs, blazing solos and clever lyrics.

In the singles charts the same week as Rumours: Walk This Way is a sex-positive, multi-cultural classic, with a killer riff and a giant chorus that's entertained two generations of rock fans. But do revelations about Steven Tyler's private change how we should feel about it?

Nicky Horne and guests tackle the 6th best-selling original album of all time: Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Includes debates about Peter Green's Mac Vs the LA Years, the rise of 'grown-up rock', and the inner-band soap opera, while Nicky remembers going to the album launch in LA.

The 20 Minute Club looks at another single that was in the charts the same week as Appetite For Destruction was released: Heart's piano-bursting, lung-stretching, power ballad to end all ballad-powering, Alone.

The 20 Minute Club – our new companion mini-pod to The 20 Million Club – continues to cover singles from July 1987, the same month as the release of Appetite For Destruction, with a look at Whitesnake's Here I Go Again.

Introducing The 20 Minute Club, a companion minipod to The 20 Million Club, covering singles that were in the charts at the same time as our featured album. First up: American Psycho, Mona Lisa and the "yuppie sex music" that is Genesis' In Too Deep.

The 20 Million Club returns with Nicky Horne, Siân Llewellyn and Scott Rowley joined for the first episode by Paul Elliott, the first UK journalist to interview Guns N' Roses, as they chew over the sex, drugs and carnage behind the best-selling debut album of all time - Appetite for Destruction. Make sure to like, subscribe, rate and review The 20 Million Club wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Coming soon - The 20 Million Club Season 2. New albums and new guests but the same topic. Why are these albums regarded as some of the greatest of all time? Make sure you like and subscribe to never miss an episode of the 20 Million Club.

Season 1 of The 20 Million Club ends with a look at the world's 3rd best-selling album – and possibly the most ridiculous. "On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?" No idea what you're talking about, mate.

It's lyrically bleak, musically bonkers and It only has five real songs on it. So how did TDSOTM become the 4th best-selling album of all time? This month, The 20 Million Club swap personal tales of Nick Mason and Storm Thorgeson and consider why Dark Side was the most shoplifted album in HMV Glasgow in the 1990s.

Prince: Purple Rain Is Prince's Purple Rain an all-time classic or an over-hyped and over-produced slice of 80s bunk? The team debate purple bananas, MTV, androgyny and the apocalypse, producer Adam listens to it for the very first time, and Nicky recalls the time he talked to Prince about trains.

Queen's Greatest Hits is the UK’s all-time best-selling album. But are greatest hits albums even proper albums, or is it a massive cheat? The team discuss the idea of The Album in the age of the playlist and go through the many highlights and occasional lowlights of Greatest Hits. PLUS: Is Fat Bottomed Girls a body positive anthem? What would it sound like is Elvis sang Crazy Little Thing Called Love and more.

Alanis Morissette's 3rd album earned her 7 Grammy nominations, 4 wins, and went on to become the 13th best-selling album of all-time, selling more copies than any album by the Beatles or The Stones. Alanis is literally bigger than Elvis. The team try and make sense of it all, through an analysis of irony and the UK's best-selling cheeses. Someone had to.

Led Zeppelin's 4th album was released in November 1971. Housed in an anonymous sleeve, with no band name and no album title, the record company feared that it was commercial suicide. The idiots. It became the band's best-selling album. Why? The team consider hype, black magic, stairways to heaven, hippy-Hobbity shit and more.

AC/DC’s 7th album was released on 25 July 1980. Their first with singer Brian Johnson, it came out just months after the death of Bon Scott, AC/DC’s previous frontman. Housed in a plain black sleeve, with a new singer and a tragic backstory, Back In Black went on to sell over 50 million copies world-wide to become the best-selling rock album of all-time. But c'mon: is it THAT good?