April 29 in the 90s was all about the good stuff — the TV you had to catch live, the videos blowing up TRL, the books everyone was reading, and the magazine covers you dog-eared at the checkout line. Let's run it back year by year.
What Was On TV
Before DVR, before streaming — if you missed it, you missed it. Here's what had everyone talking at school the next morning.
Late Night: Joe Pesci, Randy Travis & Louis Gossett Jr.
Friday night late night was an embarrassment of riches in 1994. Louis Gossett Jr. made the talk show circuit, while Joe Pesci and Randy Travis somehow shared a couch — a combination that could only happen in the 90s. David Faustino (Bud Bundy from Married with Children) also made his rounds on the daytime circuit.
Little Richard Hosts a Music Special: Beatles, Satchel & Suede
Little Richard took the hosting chair for a Saturday night music special featuring rare Beatles footage alongside Satchel and The London Suede. Meanwhile on Almost Live!, Pat Cashman physically refused to let Jay Leno leave the set in a bit that kept escalating past the point of reason.
Babylon 5 S2: 'The Gathering' + Voyager's 'The Thaw'
Babylon 5 ran 'The Gathering (Part 1)' in its second season — the space opera was fully hitting its stride. On the same night, Star Trek: Voyager delivered 'The Thaw' (S2E23), one of the series' creepiest: a clown-villain who lives inside a fear-simulation machine and refuses to release hostages. It holds up. Regis Philbin, Dave's mom, and Peter Berg shared couch space on Letterman.
Friends S4E19: 'The One with All the Haste' + Robin Williams on Leno
Friends aired 'Three Dates and a Breakup (Part 1)' in Season 4, with the Ross/Rachel aftermath still simmering. Robin Williams and Tanya Tucker made for the most chaotic late-night couch combination of the spring. Elsewhere, a Wilt Chamberlain retrospective documentary aired — the big man was 63 and still larger than life.
Voyager's 'Living Witness' + 3rd Rock + The Drew Carey Show
'Living Witness' (Voyager S4E23) is widely considered one of the best episodes in the entire franchise — a holographic historian in the far future has a completely wrong version of Voyager's crew as villains, and Janeway has to set the record straight. On the comedy side, 3rd Rock from the Sun gave us 'Just Your Average Dick' (S3E22) and The Drew Carey Show aired 'Drew's Cousin.' Patrick Swayze and Hugh Hefner shared a late-night couch in what was a genuinely surreal April evening.
TRL Countdown — April 29, 1999
Total Request Live was the center of the pop universe in 1999. Teens were burning up the phone lines to vote, and the countdown from Times Square was the most-watched 30 minutes on MTV. Here's the full chart from this date.
TRL's retirement mechanic meant a video that dominated long enough got 'retired' with a celebration. The slot was cleared for the next challenger.
The video that launched a decade of pop. Britney was 17 and the school-uniform choreography was already iconic. Still stuck at #2 trying to claw to the top.
The definitive 'no thanks' anthem of the era. T-Boz and Chilli were riding high off Fanmail, and 'No Scrubs' was simultaneously #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Left-Eye's rap sealed it.
Peak *NSYNC: five guys, matching fits, a mental institution set, and a key change that hits like a freight train. This was from their self-titled debut and it was everywhere.
Slim Shady had just arrived and nobody knew what to make of him. The video was relentlessly weird, Dr. Dre's beat was undeniable, and Eminem was clearly not playing by anyone else's rules.
The other boy band. Nick Lachey and crew delivered a genuinely affecting ballad about having to let someone go. It was the slower, more earnest alternative to *NSYNC's bombast.
The album of the year candidate. Lauryn Hill's Miseducation was on a completely different artistic level from everything else in the TRL chart — raw, aching, and built to last. 'Ex-Factor' was the slow-burn heartbreak track that held the album together.
The 1998 battle-ballad still had legs a year later. Two of R&B's biggest voices trading verses — it was #1 for 13 weeks when it dropped and it kept showing up everywhere.
Sunny, breezy, completely inescapable. Mark McGrath and the band had figured out the exact formula for a spring radio smash and 'Every Morning' was it.
The rap-rock wrecking ball. Kid Rock was crashing the TRL pop party uninvited and 'Bawitdaba' didn't care that it didn't belong here. Its chart presence was proof the genre was fully crossing over.
Billboard Hot 100 — Late April
The Hot 100 was the definitive measure of a song's cultural reach. Here's what owned the chart in the weeks around April 29 across the decade.
#1: Ace of Base — 'The Sign'
The Swedish pop quartet had been camped at the top of the Hot 100 for what felt like an eternity. 'The Sign' spent 6 weeks at #1 earlier in the year and was still in heavy rotation on every radio station in America by April. All-4-One's 'I Swear' was climbing fast and would take the top spot in May.
#1: Celine Dion — 'Because You Loved Me'
From the Up Close & Personal soundtrack, Celine Dion's power ballad reigned supreme through most of spring 1996. Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill was still an album chart monster — over a year after release it was still in the top 10.
#1: Notorious B.I.G. — 'Hypnotize'
Released just weeks before Biggie's death on March 9, 1997, 'Hypnotize' posthumously reached #1 — the first time a rap song topped the Hot 100. The chart run was bittersweet. Hanson's 'MMMBop' was days from dropping and would soon detonate the pop world.
#1: K-Ci & JoJo — 'All My Life'
One of the defining ballads of the decade. K-Ci & JoJo's stripped-down R&B plea spent 7 weeks at #1 and became one of the best-selling singles of 1998. Next's 'Too Close' was still in the top five.
#1: TLC — 'No Scrubs'
TLC's anthem was simultaneously dominating both TRL and the Billboard Hot 100 in late April 1999 — a rare double lock. Backstreet Boys were closing fast with 'I Want It That Way,' which would hit #6 on its first chart week in May.
NYT Bestsellers — Late April
Before Amazon one-click, books were a cultural event. These are the titles that had airport bookshops sold out and reading groups arguing.
John Grisham, 'The Client' + 'Bridges of Madison County' in Paperback
John Grisham was the closest thing the 90s had to a reading mandate. The Client had been on the NYT fiction list for months. Meanwhile Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County — dismissed by critics, beloved by everyone else — continued its historic run in paperback. It had already sold 10 million copies.
John Grisham, 'The Runaway Jury' + Primary Colors (Anonymous)
Grisham's courtroom thriller about a rigged trial arrived to predictable bestseller status. On the nonfiction/anonymous fiction side, Primary Colors — a roman à clef about the 1992 Clinton campaign — was still generating enormous buzz as everyone tried to figure out who 'Anonymous' was (it was journalist Joe Klein).
John Grisham, 'The Partner' + Charles Frazier, 'Cold Mountain'
Grisham at #1 again. But the more interesting story was Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain building word-of-mouth momentum — it would go on to win the National Book Award and sell 3 million copies. It was generating serious pre-publication buzz in April 1997.
Tom Clancy, 'Rainbow Six' + Nicholas Sparks, 'Message in a Bottle'
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six dominated hardcover fiction — Jack Ryan's world was expanding with new characters and the video game was already in development. Nicholas Sparks' Message in a Bottle was climbing the list on its way to a Kevin Costner film adaptation.
John Grisham, 'The Testament' + Frank McCourt, ''Tis'
Grisham was somehow still doing it — The Testament was a massive hit. Frank McCourt's 'Tis, the follow-up to the Pulitzer-winning Angela's Ashes, was generating enormous anticipation. And in the UK, Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic was quietly launching what would become a global franchise.
Magazine Covers — Late April Issues
The newsstand was the social feed of the 90s. These covers are what greeted you at the grocery store checkout line in late April.
People: Spring Movie Season + O.J. Buildup
People's late-April covers were cycling between spring box office — Tom Hanks was everywhere after Philadelphia — and early coverage of what would become the trial of the century. Julia Roberts covers were perennial. The OJ story was still in its early stages, but the tabloid frenzy was already beginning.
Rolling Stone: Alanis Morissette & The Alternative Takeover
Rolling Stone's spring 1995 covers reflected a rock landscape in flux. Alanis Morissette was about to drop Jagged Little Pill and the advance buzz was real. The grunge hangover was still fresh — Cobain had died almost exactly a year earlier — and the magazine was mapping what came next.
Sports Illustrated: NBA Playoff Preview — Bulls vs. Everyone
Late April SI was reliably an NBA playoff preview issue, and in 1996 that meant Michael Jordan and the 72-win Bulls on the cover. The question wasn't if Chicago would win the championship — it was by how much. Dennis Rodman's rebounding numbers and hair color were both impossible to ignore.
Vogue: Spring Collections + The Minimalism Moment
Vogue's late spring 1997 issues were deep in minimalism. Calvin Klein's clean lines and neutral palettes were dominating, Kate Moss was the face of the decade, and the slip dress was everywhere. The maximalism of the early 90s felt very far away.
Entertainment Weekly: Titanic's Awards Tail + X-Files Movie
EW's late spring 1998 covers were split between the Titanic Oscar phenomenon still playing out and the enormous anticipation for Fight the Future — the X-Files feature film arriving that summer. Mulder and Scully on a movie poster felt like the culmination of something the whole decade had been building toward.
Rolling Stone: Britney, Ricky Martin & Y2K Anxiety
By April 1999 Rolling Stone covers were pop-dominated — Britney's debut issue had been the magazine's fastest-selling. Ricky Martin's 'Livin' la Vida Loca' was days from detonating. And the cultural backdrop of every magazine was the looming Y2K question: eight months left and nobody quite knew what January 1 was going to look like.
Full Events Archive
Highlights
1991 Bangladesh cyclone
A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 miles per hour (249 km/h), killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as ten million homeless.
Read more →
The world was watching. Here's what dominated the headlines:
James Faulkner (cricketer)
James Faulkner, Australian cricketer
1991 Bangladesh cyclone
A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 miles per hour (249 km/h), killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as ten million homeless.
Jung Hye-sung
Jung Hye-sung, South Korean actress
Misaki Doi
Misaki Doi, Japanese tennis player
The 7.0 Mw Racha earthquake affects Georgia with a maximum MSK intensity of IX (Destructive), killing 270 people.
Riots in Los Angeles begin, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 63 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.
The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 enters into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons by its signatories.
The decade's soundtrack was electric. These artists were making waves:
On the field and off it, athletes were making history:
Chris Johnson (basketball, born 1990)
Chris Johnson, American basketball player
Adam Smith (footballer, born 1991)
Adam Smith, English footballer
Lucas Tousart
Lucas Tousart, French footballer
Mallory Swanson
Mallory Pugh, American soccer player
Must-see TV was a real thing — and this is what filled the airwaves:
All My Children
"Fri Apr 29 1994" (Season 1994, Episode 85) aired on 1994-04-29.
Legends of the Hidden Temple
"The Collar of Davy Crockett" (Season 1, Episode 38) aired on 1994-04-29.
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
"Bad Luck Betty" (Season 1, Episode 25) aired on 1994-04-29.
Burke's Law
"Who Killed the Romance?" (Season 1, Episode 11) aired on 1994-04-29.
"Louis Gossett, Jr." (Season 1994, Episode 32) aired on 1994-04-29.
"Joe Pesci, Randy Travis, Dan Wilkenson" (Season 1994, Episode 67) aired on 1994-04-29.
"Little Richard (host), The Beatles, Satchel, The London Suede" (Season 1995, Episode 16) aired on 1995-04-29.
"Pat Cashman won't let Jay Leno leave" (Season 11, Episode 22) aired on 1995-04-29.
"Escape from Witch Mountain" (Season 39, Episode 12) aired on 1995-04-29.
"Bud Abbott & Lou Costello: Abbott & Costello Meet Biography" (Season 1996, Episode 102) aired on 1996-04-29.
"Regis Philbin, Dave's Mom, Peter Berg" (Season 1996, Episode 67) aired on 1996-04-29.
"The Lucas Case and Private-Property Rights" (Season 32, Episode 13) aired on 1997-04-29.
"Tuesday April 29 1997" (Season 25, Episode 86) aired on 1997-04-29.
"Something About Inter-Ex-Spousal Relations" (Season 1, Episode 23) aired on 1997-04-29.
"Tales from the Dark Side or, Ty Takes the Redeye" (Season 1, Episode 19) aired on 1997-04-29.
"Wilt Chamberlain" (Season 1997, Episode 57) aired on 1997-04-29.
"Robin Williams, Tanya Tucker" (Season 1997, Episode 66) aired on 1997-04-29.
"Just Your Average Dick (1)" (Season 3, Episode 22) aired on 1998-04-29.
"Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart" (Season 12, Episode 4) aired on 1998-04-29.
"Two Guys, a Girl and a Party" (Season 1, Episode 8) aired on 1998-04-29.
"Jason Gedrick" (Season 1998, Episode 57) aired on 1998-04-29.
"Patrick Swayze, Hugh Hefner" (Season 1998, Episode 65) aired on 1998-04-29.
Total Request Live had teenagers calling in around the clock. Here's what was charting:
The #1 most requested video on TRL on this date in 1999
#2 on TRL — Britney Spears, "...Baby One More Time"
#3 on TRL — TLC, "No Scrubs"
#4 on TRL — *NSYNC, "I Drive Myself Crazy"
#5 on TRL — Eminem, "My Name Is"
#6 on TRL — 98 Degrees, "The Hardest Thing"
#7 on TRL — Lauryn Hill, "Ex-Factor"
#8 on TRL — Brandy & Monica, "The Boy Is Mine"
#9 on TRL — Sugar Ray, "Every Morning"
#10 on TRL — Kid Rock, "Bawitdaba"
By Year
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