Reception
In the first week of its release, the single was at number 103 on the Billboard charts. By August 12, Dunhill released the LP, Nick Featuring Eve of Destruction. The LP reached its peak of number thirty-seven on the Billboard album chart during the week ending September 25. That same day the single went to number one on the chart, and repeated the feat on the Cashbox chart, where it had debuted at number thirty. McGuire would never again break into the top forty of the Billboard Hot 100. It went to number one in Norway for two weeks.
The American media helped popularize the song by using it as an example of everything that was wrong with the youth of that time. The song also drew flak from conservatives. A group called The Spokesmen released an answer record entitled "The Dawn of Correction". A few months later, Green Beret medic Sgt. Barry Sadler released the patriotic "Ballad of the Green Berets". Johnny Sea's spoken word recording, "Day For Decision", was also a response to the song.
The song was banned by some radio stations in the USA ("claiming it was an aid to the enemy in Vietnam") and by Radio Scotland. It was placed on a "restricted list" by the BBC, and could not be played on "general entertainment programmes".
Read more about this topic: Eve Of Destruction (song)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
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“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)