Episode 203: VH1 Behind the Music, Starting Lineup Figures, Most Controversial Songs Ever, Roswell UFO Incident(7-9-2025)

A look back at the popular Starting Lineup sports figures. Behind the scenes of Behind the Music. Some of the most controversial songs ever written.

Episode 203 of the podcast unloads a tidal wave of nostalgia for you to enjoy, no matter where you are.

We start off with a deep dive into the world of Starting Lineup sports figures. Straddling the line between toys and collectibles, these figures were desired by 80s and 90s boys, from preteens to much older collectors. What made them so popular? 

VH1 Behind the Music was a compelling and, at times, depressing television show. It delved into the lives of musical acts, showing them as humans and not just celebrities. We will examine the show in general, some of its most well-known episodes, and also explore why the show resonated with so many for so long.

Controversy is on the menu in this week's Top 5. We will look at some of the most controversial songs ever written. This spans genres and decades. These songs caused discussions, arguments, and boycotts. We will try to give the reasons behind the controversy. 

There is a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule looking back at the infamous Roswell, New Mexico UFO incident.

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Helpful Links from this Episode

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Listen to Episode 202 here

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello, world! And welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 203. Fourth of July weekend has just passed. It's a sprint through summer to Labor Day. I'm bringing the fireworks in the form of fun Gen X nostalgia. We're gonna kick off the show with a look back at collectibles that were favorites of lots of 80s and 90s boys, and that was the starting lineup's sports figures. We're gonna go way, way back in the day and look at the VH1 Behind the Music series. There will be a brand new top five. These are the top five most controversial songs ever released. Some of them will surprise you. And there'll be a brand new this week in history and time capsule looking back at the famous Roswell UFO incident. All of that is coming up right now on episode 203 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Oh man, you have no idea how much that was needed. As most of you know, I record the podcast on the Friday before, and it goes live on Wednesday. Well, those of you listening on Wednesday, you know the previous Friday was 4th of July. And living on Cape Cod, it's like pouring 50 pounds of sand into a bucket that holds five pounds. It's just insanity. I went for a run this morning, Friday morning, and I saw so many people on the back roads, the route that I like to go, I felt like I was in a road race. I was passing people on the street, dodging cars, dodging dogs and strollers. The line to get into the beach parking lot was 25 cars deep, and when I got to the beach parking lot, there was a sign that said lot full. It was like a Seinfeld moment. I looked at the sign and I just said, Oh, that's a shame. That run is the reason I need this energy drink. I am wiped out. I did more miles than I thought I would, but that energy drink and the fun content I have for this week will get me through Fourth of July weekend. I hope wherever you are, you're having the best week, the best day possible. I hope your fourth was fun, was safe. You know, I kind of made the joke last week at the end of the podcast, you know, be safe. I don't want to have any of you blowing your hands off with fireworks. Well, what ended up happening a few days ago from when I record this in the town of Mashpee, which is probably 20 minute drive from me, there was going to be a fireworks celebration, and a few hours beforehand they must have been setting it up, and most of the fireworks exploded in one huge cloud. Luckily, I know there were some people injured. I think none of them were life-threatening, but it just goes to show you that even professionals with a professional setup, there can be accidents. It's not just the drunken Yahoos out there stumbling around firing fireworks off into the trees. Before I get started with the main meat of the podcast, you know I cannot start the show off without thanking my Patreon subscribers, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, Matt. Thank you all so much for being the biggest backers, the biggest supporters. I hope you enjoyed the new bonus subscriber-only podcast episode that went up a few days ago, July 1st. For those interested in becoming subscribers, five dollars a month gets you access to the bonus podcast episodes. It gets you access to the remastered without a map live streams. They were the podcast post-game shows that I did a few years ago, usually on Instagram live. You get access to YouTube videos early, and there's more stuff up there. I'm constantly trying to find new things to share. I've got an ever-growing free tier also for those of you that want to just go and check out what I've got there. But we can save the rest of the housekeeping portion of the podcast for the end. Let's get into the main show. Whether you're at a picnic, a barbecue, sitting on the beach, stuck in traffic, unfortunately. I'm sorry if you are. Let's bring the fun with the Gen X nostalgia, and let's kick it off with a look back at a favorite of my childhood and maybe some of yours. The starting lineup sports figures coming up right now on episode 203 of the In My Footsteps Podcast. I started collecting baseball cards, sports cards when I was eight, nine years old. I think I started collecting or getting into action figures around the same time, Transformers, He-Man. So when I was probably 10, 11 years old, there was something that combined my love of sports, sports cards, and action figures, and that was something called the starting lineup figures. Those of you listening that are my age, around my age, you're probably familiar with the starting lineup figures. They were a big deal for young boys, teenage boys, probably collectors also, older guys. From the late 80s through, I would say, maybe the early 2000s, maybe my timeline's off. Starting lineup figures, they were a line of collectible action figures that brought professional athletes to life in plastic form. Those of you that collected them or at least know what they are, you can picture them in your head. But where did they come from? So the concept for starting lineup figures, it was born from the mind of Pat McInally, who was a former wide receiver and punter for the Cincinnati Bengals of the NFL. Macinally, who was a Harvard graduate, had a keen eye for business and marketing, and he noticed the lack of sports-themed action figures on toy shelves that were dominated by the things I mentioned earlier: G.I. Joe, Transformers, He-Man. He was smart. He knew there was a desire, a need in the market. McAnally envisioned detailed figures modeled after real athletes, packaged with a trading card to add both play and collectability. In a bit of serendipity, being from Cincinnati where his football roots were, McAnally pitched the idea to Kenner Products, and the company was based in Cincinnati. Kenner was already known for its wildly successful Star Wars action figures, which at some point on the podcast, I'll have to do a deep dive into those original figures and kind of how much some of those are worth if you had them in their original packaging. But Kenner was all about it. They jumped at the opportunity, and the starting lineup figures made their debut in 1988. Maybe I just forgot, but I didn't realize that the initial 1988 starting lineup series, which was focused on Major League Baseball, there were 124 different figures, different players. I don't know why I thought there was maybe two or three players per team. These original figures, they were about four inches tall. They had a baseball card with them, and they were displayed in some kind of an athletic pose. They were pitching or batting or catching. 1988 in baseball, there were a lot of big stars. So some of the standout names from that first year, there was Don Mattingley from the New York Yankees, Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs from the Boston Red Sox, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire from the Oakland Athletics, Daryl Strawberry from the New York Mets, Cal Ripkin Jr. from the Baltimore Orioles, Ozzie Smith from the St. Louis Cardinals. So all of them, you think, if you know sports, you say, oh yeah, of course they deserve their own action figures. But just for the fun of it, I went and did my research to find you some of the, I guess you would say, lesser known, I don't want to say bad baseball players that had their own action figures, but these would probably be the ones that would be peg warmers. You'd go into any Toys R Us or Child World, and you would absolutely find these there. There was Franklin Stubbs, who was a first baseman slash outfielder for the LA Dodgers, who batted a whopping .223 in 1988. He had his own action figure. There was Zane Smith, the pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, who won five games and lost 10 with a 4.3 ERA in 1988. He had an action figure. There was Jody Davis, a catcher for the Chicago Cubs, who batted a whopping .230. He had his own action figure. And there was Chris Brown, a third baseman for the San Francisco Giants, who batted a whopping .235. He had his own action figure. I guess you had to give a certain amount for each team. I think it was four for each team, and if your team stunk, you kinda had no choice. But it makes it seem like a lot of us could have had our own action figures. Despite some of the less than stellar players that had their own figures, they quickly became hot commodities. The big thing with the starting lineup's figures is that their value was at its peak if you kept them in their original packaging, which me being about 10, 11 years old when they first came out, I wasn't gonna do that. In fact, I didn't learn about the whole collectibles thing and keeping products in their packaging until I met my stepfather, Serpa, in 1995. That's his last name, Serpa. His first name is Chris like me. But he was the one that taught me, oh, if you want these to be collectible, keep them in their packaging. So all of my starting lineup figures I had were worth nothing. And they're all gone now. They've been thrown away over the years, so I can't complain. The baseball figures were a huge success, and starting lineup, they expanded their product line. Eventually they had by the early 90s NFL football, NBA basketball, NHL hockey, boxing and Olympic athletes, college sports legends. Each of these lines maintained the format of action figure plus trading card, but the designs became more detailed over time. In some years, they even included mini posters or commemorative cards, which would probably make it harder for kids to not open the package if they were told, keep it sealed, it'll be worth more. Another big part of the value of the starting lineup figures was their regional distribution. So you get me living on Cape Cod, I would get Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, Boston Bruins, Boston Celtics. And obviously you'd get some of the bigger names. But if you were looking for some of the lesser known players, you're not gonna find them outside of their home market. I wouldn't have been able to go to my local Toys R Us and get a Chris Brown from the San Francisco Giants action figure. Although if you did want his action figure, I just went on eBay and I found one sealed in its package for $21.99. So there you go. So what made the starting lineup figure special? First, it was real athlete representation. You could find your favorite player from your favorite team instead of fictional characters or nameless, faceless people. This then led to the collectability with the limited releases, and like I said, regional availability. You've got many figures that are rare collector's items, especially the Hall of Famers and short print rookies. For example, I went back to eBay and do my research. I found the 1988 starting lineup Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan figure going for as high as $5,000 in its package. Which I don't think I ever had, so I cannot feel too bad or be kicking myself. Obviously, starting lineup figures were a big deal for kids, people my age, teenagers. When I was coming up in the late 80s, getting to have a Roger Clemens, a Larry Bird, a Ray Bork. I don't think the Patriots really had anyone good in the late 80s, but having their action figures in my room, that was a big deal. For a few years into the early 90s, the starting lineup figures were everywhere. There were tons of commercials for them with the real players in the commercials.

Speaker: 13:36

Only today's greatest sports heroes make it to starting lineup. Collect basketball's Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and Magic Johnson to be a winner! Detailed uniforms. Every home team and their official collect starting lineup, each sold separately.

Speaker 1: 13:53

But things changed. Kenner was bought by Hasbro in 1991, and starting lineup continued under the Hasbro name, but enthusiasm started to wane due to the increasing popularity of video games, trading card games, and more sophisticated sports memorabilia. By 2001, the original starting lineup toy line was officially discontinued. This is where the collectors started to make their mark because eBay was big already in 2001. If you go on eBay and just type in starting lineup figures, you will find tons of them for thousands. I know in my collection I had maybe a dozen different ones at its peak. The only one I still have, and it's in my mother's basement, in its original packaging, is a Barry Sanders starting lineup figure. He was my favorite football player, so naturally I'd have one of him. I just went back on eBay to try to find out how much it was worth, and I'm getting so sidetracked, I'm like, I gotta actually record the podcast and not research how much my old toys are worth. That's for late nights and edibles, not for now. There have been attempts to make comebacks with the starting lineup figures, including the 2000s NBA Legend box sets, 2005 Cooperstown Baseball Legends series, a McFarland Sports Pick series, which was a spiritual successor with more realistic sculptures. In 2022, Hasbro announced an official revival of starting lineup, this time with modern NBA stars, and a focus on premium articulation, digital collectibility, including NFTs. These new figures, they look great and they move a lot more. It's like you could get them to fight and wrestle each other. Overall, starting lineup figures represent a unique chapter in sports and pop culture history. They captured a time when sports fandom was deeply personal, which I mean it still is. But as a child of the 1980s, if you loved sports, your sports team was everything. You had loads of posters on your wall, maybe you had some jerseys, tons of different sports cards, and starting lineup figures. It gave you street cred to have a starting lineup figure of your favorite player. Today though, collectors still hunt for the mint condition figures, the rarities. I just told you how much the 1988 Michael Jordan one is worth. Five grand. There's also the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie action figure, which I can't find on eBay. Yes, I keep going back to look, I'm sorry. More importantly, and this thing for me as a kid growing up in the 80s, the starting lineup figures helped to bridge the gap between play and passion. I always wanted to play baseball and basketball, so having those action figures, it stoked those dreams and desires. I could think of playing in the majors and then look at my Roger Clemens starting lineup figure and say, Yup, I'm gonna be like you someday, Rocket. And then yell at him when I didn't make the school team and say it's your fault. In the end, the starting lineup figures, it was never just about toys, it was about heroes, hometown pride, and holding on to the magic of the game, one figure at a time. This week in history, we are going back 78 years to July 7th, 1947, and the infamous Roswell, New Mexico UFO incident. There are some weeks that I just get lucky with what I find for this week in history. The fact that I get to talk about Roswell, one of the most famous extraterrestrial UFO incidents ever, that's just luck and good researching. I am sure most of you listening have heard of at least a little bit of the Roswell incident. It was a small desert town in New Mexico, became ground zero for what would become one of the most famous and controversial events in UFO lore. Before Roswell, the idea of flying saucers wasn't yet embedded in American pop culture. Interest in mysterious aerial phenomena, it was rapidly rising. In fact, just weeks earlier, on June 24, 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine crescent-shaped objects flying at incredible speeds near Mount Rainier in Washington State. He described their movement as resembling a saucer skipping across water, inadvertently coining the now iconic term flying saucer. Arnold's account sparked a media frenzy, and within days, numerous similar sightings were reported across the United States. The cultural atmosphere was charged with Cold War anxiety, and anything unexplained in the skies became a matter of national concern. So, what exactly is the Roswell incident? Something strange crashed at a ranch about 75 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico. Rancher Mac Brazzel discovered debris scattered across a field, metallic rods, rubber strips, and foil-like material. He reported the find to local authorities, and soon the Roswell Army Airfield was involved. On July 8, 1947, the RAAF, Roswell Army Airfield, issued a stunning press release stating they had recovered a flying disc from the ranch. The announcement made headlines across the nation, but within 24 hours the story changed dramatically. Now military officials retracted the statement and claimed the debris was from a weather balloon, not a spacecraft. Photos were released showing military personnel posing with tin foil, wooden sticks, and rubber remnants, supposedly proving the mundane origin of the wreckage. The Roswell case was quietly closed for a time. For over 30 years, Roswell faded from public consciousness, dismissed as a misunderstanding. In 1978, the story was reignited when UFO researcher Stanton Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had first handled the debris. Marcel insisted that what he saw in 1947 was not from Earth and that the weather balloon explanation was a cover-up. This sparked a new wave of interest. In the 1980s and 90s, dozens of books, TV documentaries, and supposed eyewitness accounts emerged. Some claimed that not only had a craft crashed in Roswell, but alien bodies were recovered and whisked away by the U.S. military. In response to the mounting public interest, the United States Air Force released two official reports in the 1990s. The first confirmed that debris was from Project Mogul, a top secret program using high-altitude balloons to detect Soviet nuclear tests. The second, in 1997, attempted to explain alleged sightings of alien bodies as dummies used in high-altitude parachute tests. Despite these explanations, belief in a government cover-up remains strong among UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists. Roswell has since evolved into a cultural phenomenon with an annual UFO festival and a dedicated UFO museum drawing thousands of visitors each year. Since Roswell, the U.S. has been home to numerous other famous UFO sightings. There was the Washington, D.C. UFO incident of 1952, the Pascagoula abduction of 1973, the Phoenix Lights of 1997, the USS Nimitz UFO Encounter of 2004. I don't have time to go super deep into detail with all those. I just wanted to give them to you, give you homework if you want to look them up. For us New Englanders, there was the story of Betty and Barney Hill in New Hampshire. I did a segment on that on the podcast way back in episode six, so if you want to go digging deep into the archives, you can find out about Betty and Barney Hill. The Roswell incident of 1947 stands as a pivotal moment in American history where skepticism, secrecy, and a thirst for the unknown collided. Whether it was a weather balloon, an alien spacecraft, or something in between, the Roswell incident launched the modern UFO era. And that Roswell incident occurred 78 years ago, this week in history. Oh, it's time. I have abducted a brand new time capsule. We're going to stick to the same day. July 7th, 1947. The Roswell incident is occurring. What is going on in the world of pop culture back then? Well, let's find out. The number one song was Che Baba Che Baba by Perry Como. I deserve credit for getting through reading that without laughing at that name. I did a couple times and had to edit it out. Pericomo sang lead on this, being backed up by a group called the Satisfiers, and Lloyd Schaefer and his orchestra. This was a single, and the flip side, When You Were Sweet 16, was also a big hit for Perry Como, topping the charts at number two. Other famous recordings of this song were done by Peggy Lee and The Wiggles, which I never thought I'd have. Those two in the same sentence. So there you go. The number one movie was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing 35 cents. This is a fantasy romance starring Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, and Natalie Wood. It's about a young widow who flees with her daughter to a quaint seaside town, but the house she moves into is haunted. I couldn't find any box office numbers for it, but it is 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so if that sways you, go and check it out. There was no number one TV show because it was 1947, but the number one radio show was the Lux Radio Theater. This was the standard radio anthology show that you would expect from the 1930s and 40s. There was music, songs, comedy skits, and some of the notable guest stars on the show, it was a who's who of who was famous back then. Abbott and Costello, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Bing Crosby, Betty Davis, Judy Garland, Catherine Hepburn. I could keep going on and on, but you get the idea. And if you were around back then, July 7th, 1947, you're starting a family, you've got that American dream of the house with the little white picket fence out front. Well, I got something for you. No, it's not the house. It's the white picket fence. You can get it in the Sears catalog. It will only cost you 49 cents a foot, or about $7 a foot when adjusted for inflation to 2025. So you can just buy all this fence and buy the land and then just fence it off and live in a tent in the middle. That wraps up the time capsule. That wraps up this week in history. We go from the sweet and sterile idea of the American dream and the white picket fence to the most controversial songs of all time. This top five will not be a list that I make a playlist out of on Spotify, just so you know. Oh, you will not find any safe, sterile, PG kid-friendly music on this list. We're going straight to the most controversial songs ever released. This is a top five that one of the songs that's on the top five popped into my head randomly a few weeks ago, and the first thing I thought of was, man, I remember all the controversy around that song. And it went from there. I wonder what the most controversial songs are ever. What I'm doing with this list, controversy, it comes in all different shades. You could probably easily make a top five most controversial from any genre, any decade of music, and maybe that'll happen in the future. Maybe I'll start milking that topic for all it's worth. But for this week, we're just doing all time. It goes all across genres, all across decades. Your list will likely vary from mine, but as with most top fives, there are some honorable mentions, and the top five itself is in no particular order. So let's start diving into the controversy pool here. We'll start with the honorable mentions. So I'm gonna kind of gloss through these, get through pretty fast so we can go to the top five. Honorable mentions for most controversial songs of all time include The Pill by Loretta Lynn. This is a country song from 1975 about birth control. Another honorable mention is Justify My Love by Madonna. This is from 1990 and was more controversial for its video that was eventually banned from MTV. Another honorable mention is Suicide Solution by Ozzie Osborne. The song is from 1980, but gained controversy in 1985 when a lawsuit was filed by the parents of teenager John McCollum, who took his life allegedly after listening to the song. Another honorable mention is He Hit Me by the Crystals. The full name of this song is He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss. This is from 1961, and it's a song about domestic abuse. So just the subject material and the time frame tells you why this was so controversial. And the final honorable mention, to keep this as PG as I can for you listening, is F the Police by NWA. This song is from 1988 and it's about police brutality and corruption. Is it any wonder why my mother didn't want eleven-year-old me, a white kid from Cape Cod, listening to NWA? Although she did let me listen to Public Enemy. That was the compromise. But that wraps up the honorable mentions. Have you heard of any of those songs? I would think Madonna, Ozzy, maybe NWA. Oh, let's get into the actual top five though. Most controversial songs of all time. We'll start with number one. Cop Killer. This is a song by the metal group Body Count that was fronted by rapper Ice T. This is from their 1992 album, also entitled Body Count. The song was recorded and written two years earlier by Ice T. He said he got inspiration from the talking head song Psycho Killer. But a song about murdering law enforcement agents, it's not going to go over well no matter when you release it or what the sentiment is behind it. Ice T said it was a protest record. In 1992 America, that's not going to matter. President George H.W. Bush criticized it. Eventually, the outcry from the public, from other politicians, lawmakers, it became too much, and Body Count pulled the album and then re-released it without the song Cop Killer. I just remember me myself in 1992 being more interested in the idea that Ice T was fronting a heavy metal band. But I mean I was 14 years old, so I wasn't very worldly and knowledgeable yet growing up on Cape Cod. Number two is God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols. This is from their one and only album, Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, from 1977. They're one of the most influential kind of one-hit wonders ever, as far as breaking open the genre of punk music. But much like heavy metal, hip-hop, punk was not mainstream, so controversies coming from that type of music, they were always going to be amplified. It's got a lot of controversial lyrics speaking about Queen Elizabeth II. Upon its release, it was released as a single. It was immediately banned. Despite it being banned, this song went to number two on the UK charts. And it didn't hurt its legacy. Rolling Stone ranked it number 175 on their top 500 greatest songs of all time. So as pro wrestling promoter legend Eric Bischoff says, controversy creates cash, and the Sex Pistols got some cash out of that song. Number three is Strange Fruit by Billy Holliday. For this song, we go all the way back to 1939. Billy Holiday, for those who don't know, was a jazz and blues singer, an absolute legend of music from the pre-television days. The controversy with this song is its depictions of lynching of African Americans in the American South. And obviously the racist, ignorant white people at the time did not want to have their racism and ignorance played on the radio. So they had the song banned, or at least tried to have it banned. Despite that, it became the best-selling song of Billy Holliday's career. And Rolling Stone rated it number 21 on their top 500 best songs of all time. So again, controversy creates cash. And speaking of controversy, this next one is the song that got me thinking of this list in the first place. And that is number four, Me So Horny by Two Live Crew. Now I know a lot of you are gonna be like, why were you thinking of this song? I don't remember why. I know that sounds like a cop-out. I think I was just wondering what in the world happened to the members of Two Live Crew. This song is from 1989, from the album As Nasty as They Wanna Be. And oh boy, there were few musical acts more controversial than Two Live Crew. This is a song, if you've never heard it, and your parents don't listen to it for the first time in front of your kids. It's got some graphic sexual lyrics. Obviously, the title, you can figure out what the song's about. When this song, when this album came out, Two Live Crew was brought up on charges of obscenity. The band was eventually overturned on appeal, and the album eventually went platinum. There are a total of 18 tracks on the album as nasty as they wanna be. Me So Horny is the lead track. I'll try to keep this PG. I'm gonna read a few of them to you. Maybe earmuffs for the kids. There's one song called Dick Almighty. There's one called the F shop. Figure out what the F word was. There's another one called Get the F Out of My House. And if you're wondering, Two Live Crew did release an edited version of the album called As Clean as They Wanna Be. It did not sell as well. And they covered Oh Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison, which okay. Alright, enough Two Live Crew. Let's finish this off with number five on the list of top five most controversial songs of all time. A surprise. Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets. This song is from 1955. It is from the album Rock Around the Clock. Some of you, probably my age and older, might remember this song from the beginning of Happy Days for a few of the seasons. The controversy came from its inclusion in the film Blackboard Jungle and its association with Teenage Rebellion. The lyrics weren't obscene, but it was the idea that the government thought that it was going to lead to teenage rebellion and delinquency. This song and the movie Blackboard Jungle are seen as a few of the catalysts for the popularity of rock and roll music in general. Which I'm sure to the older generation in the 1950s, they saw it as something so new and scary and controversial they were trying to stamp it out, but they failed. So that wraps up the top five most controversial songs of all time. What do you think about my list? I'm sure some of these you're gonna say, that's not controversial. I tried to give the reasoning why. So if you like this segment, you can thank Two Live Crew for giving me the idea. As far as I know, Two Live Crew was never on VH1's behind the music. So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna take a look at that show and some of the notable moments and controversies that came from that show. During the golden age of music television, VH1's behind the music carved a distinctive niche for itself by peeling back the glamorous veneer of fame and offering raw, unfiltered stories of the musicians we thought we knew. Debuting in 1997, the show quickly became a cultural touchstone known for its mix of nostalgia, scandal, tragedy, and redemption. With its dramatic narration, archival footage, and candid interviews, Behind the Music set a new standard for music documentaries. Behind the Music obviously had that well-known intro theme. Yeah, that's the one. So Behind the Music was created during a time when VH1 was actively trying to rebrand itself. When it first came out in the mid-1980s, it was viewed as more adult, the more adult counterpart to MTV. But VH1 in the mid-1990s sought to capture Gen Xers like me and baby boomers like our parents with music-focused programming that leaned into storytelling and artist retrospectives. Jeff Gaspin, who was then VH1's executive vice president, developed the idea for behind the music as a way to blend entertainment with biography. The idea was simple yet powerful. Tell the real story behind the artist's fame, including the struggles, scandals, and personal demons they faced. The show's structure borrowed elements from classic narrative nonfiction, but then added a cinematic flair. So it made it accessible to hardcore fans and casual viewers, younger, older. In total, there were 259 episodes of Behind the Music. Now, despite there being so many different episodes, the shows typically followed a similar structure. It would start with the rise, the artists' early days, their breakout moments, the climb to fame. Then there was the fall, personal issues like drug addiction, band conflict, industry exploitation or tragedy, and then it would end with the redemption, hopefully. An ending showcasing comebacks, healing, or at least lessons learned. The show was narrated primarily by actor Jim Forbes, and it was narrated with this gravitas, the seriousness of it. The show used interviews with band members, managers, family, critics, and industry insiders. There was footage from performances, press events, and behind-the-scenes moments that gave the series a dynamic edge. It was equal parts rockumentary, melodrama. Behind the music debuted on August 17th, 1997, and they hit the ground running with their very first episode about Millie Vanilli, where band members Rob Pilates and Fabrice Morgan talked about their rise to fame, the controversy with lip syncing. For those of you interested, later this year is going to be 35 years since Milli Vanilli had to give back their Grammy Awards for Best New Artist. So later this year there's going to be a whole full segment about the history of Millie Vanilli for those that didn't live through it like me. A big thing with Behind the Music, at least for me, even if it was a musician and artist that you didn't like their music, their stories were all compelling. Just in season one, Behind the Music did episodes on Jim Croce, The Carpenters, Meatloaf, Robbie Robertson, Tony Orlando. I'm just naming ones where these were the musicians I wasn't interested in their music, but their stories were all fascinating. Over the 17 seasons that Behind the Music was on, they had pretty much anyone you could think of in music that was a part of that series. Sure, a lot of them were sad and depressing. I think maybe MC Hammer's episode is the most famous because it details just how big he got and then how quickly he fell off. I mean, at his peak, MC Hammer had a net worth of over 70 million dollars. This episode was even parodied on The Simpsons when they did a behind the laughter episode where when the Simpsons got famous, they bought MC Hammer's house and they show Homer out there. So it's supposed to be MC Hammer's Gates, it said Hammer Time, and Homer's out there with a sledgehammer changing the A to an O so it says Homer time. There were some other episodes. I just remember how sad they were. The episode about Selena, because that was in 1998, so it had only been a few years since she was murdered. You had the TLC episode that had to deal with Lisa Left Eye Lopez after her death. Notorious B.I.G., another one talking about his murder. They even did an episode about Rick James in 1998, which ended up, I don't think Dave Chappelle parodied it, but we needed his Charlie Murphy True Hollywood stories about Rick James. It definitely felt like a more comedic behind the music episode. There were times that segments on Behind the Music were breaking revelations that the public hadn't heard about. The episode about Death Row Records delved into the violent underworld of 90s West Coast rap. There was the episode about Courtney Love, where she gave an interview regarding Kurt Cobain's death that sparked renewed conspiracy theories. One of the most emotional and controversial moments ever on Behind the Music was singer Leaf Garrett confronting the friend who was paralyzed in a car accident that Garrett caused. Like I said, there's 259 episodes. You could throw a dart at the wall and pick one of those, and I guarantee you'll find something in there interesting. Even if you didn't listen to the music of that artist or you had no interest in them, you'll find yourself compelled to sit and watch. And that's a testament to VH1 and the people that made the series. If you were curious about what is seen as the best episodes ever of Behind the Music, Ranker.com, which has lists about everything voted on by people, they have a list of the best behind the music episodes, which you can go and vote in. I'll quickly go from ten to one if you want to go and watch them. Ten is Alice Cooper, nine is Alanis Morissette, eight is Metallica, seven is Fleetwood Mac, six is TLC, five is Poison, four is Depeche Mode, three is Leonard Skinnard, two is Motley Crue, and number one is Def Leopard. And in case you were wondering, and I'm sure you were, the top five lowest rated behind the music episodes, according to Ranker, are David Crosby, Robbie Robertson, Nick Lachey, Lil Wayne, and the lowest rated was the image makers, which is rock and roll photographers. Despite its popularity, like I said, over 250 episodes, by the mid-2000s, Behind the Music saw its influence waning. There was viewer fatigue. There was the formula that began to feel repetitive. There were critics that noted the show's pension for melodrama. Because you want people to watch. So even if there's not drama there, you're probably going to try to play up those things. There was the changing media landscape with the rise of reality TV and social media. This gave artists the platforms to share their own stories directly with fans. You didn't need VH1 or any other company to make the story for you. You just turn on your webcam or later on your smartphone and film your own video explaining your story to people. Another big issue was the shift in VH1's programming because they, like MTV, started to transition towards reality shows like Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, whatever other stupidity of love. This left less room in their schedule for documentary-style content or actual music. Behind the Music was officially cancelled in 2006, but has been revived several times since. Briefly in 2009, again in 2012, and once more in 2021 as a streaming reboot for Paramount Plus. These newer versions updated the format with more modern artists like Jennifer Lopez and Fat Joe, but they never fully recaptured the original's cultural impact. I also think that eventually you do run out of content. 259 episodes, it must be hard to find 259 musical acts or stories surrounding music that are controversial. So I do think that was part of it too, as you start to run out of controversies to cover, unless you want to just do reboots of the old episodes when some of the musicians keep screwing up. You're like, yeah, there's a new episode. Behind the music didn't just change VH1, it influenced the entire landscape of music storytelling. The signature format has been echoed in countless other productions like MTV's Diary, BET's Music Moguls, Netflix's This Is Pop. Even the title, the term behind the music moment, entered the cultural lexicon as a shorthand for dramatic, life-changing revelations. Moreover, these shows they humanized artists. Fans learned that the people behind chart-topping hits also struggled with insecurities, addiction, heartbreak, and trauma, just like all the rest of us. Sometimes the biggest difference between you and the musician you see on TV is they got their big break. They've got all the same issues that any of us do. Behind the music, it was more than just a television show. It was a pop culture phenomenon. It was appointment viewing a lot of the times for me. Like I said, even if I didn't listen to the music of whoever was the subject of the show, I knew for the most part it was going to be compelling for an hour. Even as the media landscape has changed, behind the music's influence lives on in today's music documentaries and biopics. Its enduring appeal proves that no matter how flashy the surface, what audiences truly crave is the real story behind the music. And I may never be the subject of a behind the music, maybe a behind the podcast one day. But until next week, that's gonna wrap up episode 203 of the In My Footsteps Podcast. Thank you all for tuning in. Thank you for making me a part of your week. Thank you for making it to the end of the show, wherever you are listening from, if it's your kitchen, your car, the beach, a picnic. It's always fun for us old people to talk about the good old days and nostalgia. And lucky for you, I'm always on the lookout for new topics to talk about on future podcast episodes. Next week is going to be episode 204, and we're going to take a look at the top five could have been athletes. These are the ones that were so hyped, but something happened, whether it was personal demons or injuries. Coming up the week after, I'm going to debut something new for the podcast. Something called a mixtape. You might have heard me talk about it. I've mentioned it a lot on Patreon. I've seen through my 203 now episodes of the podcast that I've got a lot of segments that could be collected together into a larger, self-standing podcast. I've been combing through all of my archives to find these groups of segments that I can turn into a mixtape. You'll know it when the first one drops in two weeks. It's going to be classic mall stores of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I've done two different episodes, part one, part two, of these stores, so I thought, why not start it off with something pretty simple? I'm going to stitch those two segments together, give you a new intro and outro, and then you can spend your time learning about the classic mall stores that we used to love going to. Those mixtapes, they'll be something that I sprinkle in every now and then. I'm not going to be doing a whole bunch of like greatest hits packages for you. I just thought it was something new and a little bit different that you might enjoy. If you enjoy my work, my content, and you want to support me, five dollars a month on Patreon. I've mentioned that. You can also buy me a coffee. Those can be as low as a dollar, which I always joke won't buy me a coffee. You can support me by going to my website, ChristopherSetterlund.com. It's got links to all nine of my books. There is a tenth one on the way that I'll be self-publishing. I'm hoping before the end of the summer. It's a Cape Cod History Anthology. The thing is, when you self-publish a book, you're the one in charge of everything. Layout, cover work, grammar, spelling. So I'm always super nervous that I'm gonna forget something and then the book goes out and people are like, you misspelled this word, and I'm like, yeah, I know. Of course, when it comes to supporting any content creator, the best thing you can do is share what they do. It takes like two seconds to share a link on social media, and you never know when the link you share of someone's content you like gets them viewed by the person that gives them their big break. So rather than seeing the post with a link that I put up and just liking it, just share it. It takes the same amount of time. Before I get out of here, it this is kind of like a little bit of a PSA. I won't get too preachy, but if you're not feeling right physically, go and get checked. Go to the doctor. I bring this up because I have a cousin, Jen. She passed away a little over a week ago, and it was something that didn't need to happen. I'm not going to get into the details and share that that's private family stuff. It's just something that she didn't feel right, didn't immediately go to the doctor for a few days, and it ended up being something that if caught at the beginning, she would still be here, but because she didn't, you know, it's a family tragedy, someone in your early forties, it shouldn't be the end of your story. And for my cousin Jen, uh she battled demons for years. And she fought them and she beat them, and she was living her life helping others who had battled the same demons, and she had just gotten married, and now I'm speaking of her in the past tense. It's really sad and it sucks. So if you feel something's not right, at least go get checked. Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's something that literally could kill you in four days because you didn't get it checked out. Maybe her death will help someone else live because they go and get checked, one of you maybe out there. I'm starting to ramble because when it comes to talking about death and family, it's hard to sound professional and polished. So just take care of yourself. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, be safe, be smart, and enjoy the summer weather. I'll be back next week, and remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life, because you never know what tomorrow will be.