The 20 Million Club

The 20 Million Club

From the makers of Classic Rock magazine, The 20 Million Club looks at the biggest-selling albums of all time and asks: are they REALLY all that good? Hosted by British broadcasting legend Nicky Horne with guests from the Classic Rock team, prepare for the best-selling albums of all time to be re-evaluated, celebrated and occasionally eviscerated as we ask: What's so good about them? What are the greatest tracks and which could you live without? What would you change about the record? Who comes out of the album best? And of course: why did they sell so many? Plus: The 20 Minute Club - bonus episodes on classic singles.

Episodes

Nirvana: Nevermind

March 21, 2022 • 60 mins
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?
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20 Minute Club: Dave Lee Roth, Bruce Hornsby & It Bites

March 1, 2022 • 23 mins
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.
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20 Minute Club: Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer

February 7, 2022 • 18 mins
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…
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20 Minute Club: Movie Music, August '86

January 26, 2022 • 24 mins
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?
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Repost: Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell

January 21, 2022 • 56 mins
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.)
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Bon Jovi: Slippery When Wet

December 27, 2021 • 55 mins
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.
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20 Minute Club – Sex Pistols: Anarchy In The UK

December 22, 2021 • 22 mins
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.
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20 Minute Club – Boston: More Than A Feeling

December 15, 2021 • 22 mins
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?
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20 Minute Club – Rod Stewart: Tonight's The Night

December 8, 2021 • 23 mins
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.
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Eagles: Hotel California

November 29, 2021 • 60 mins
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 READING

1991 GQ interview with Don Henley about his 1980 arrest
https://archive.li/Gk6sp

The story of the death of Lana Rae Meisner, Randy Meisner's wife:
https://www.rollingstone.com/mu...
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20 Million Club - Scorpions: Wind Of Change

November 25, 2021 • 18 mins
Was the mighty Scorps' Wind of Change part of a CIA plot to bring down communism? And more importantly, can you whistle it?
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20 Minute Club – Guns N' Roses: You Could Be Mine (redux)

November 19, 2021 • 21 mins
Was You Could Be Mine the moment GN'R sold out? (With apologies for the shonky audio on earlier version.)
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20 Minute Club – Bryan Adams: (Everything I Do) I Do It For You

November 10, 2021 • 19 mins
Does Bryan Adams' six-minute syrupfest have any redeeming features?
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Metallica: Metallica (aka The Black Album)

November 1, 2021 • 60 mins
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'.
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20 Million Club: The Hits of February 1977

October 27, 2021 • 26 mins
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.
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20 Minute Club – Thin Lizzy: Don't Believe A Word

October 20, 2021 • 18 mins
How a falling out between Phil Lynott and guitarist Brian Robertson led to 2.18 mins of killer riffs, blazing solos and clever lyrics.
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20 Minute Club – Aerosmith: Walk This Way

October 13, 2021 • 22 mins
Should revelations about Steven Tyler's private life change how we feel about Walk This Way?
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Fleetwood Mac: Rumours

October 3, 2021 • 60 mins
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.
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20 Minute Club - Heart: Alone

September 29, 2021 • 19 mins
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.
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20 Minute Club – Whitesnake: Here I Go Again

September 22, 2021 • 20 mins
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.
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