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Featured Events
2010Big Star lead singer Alex Chilton dies of a heart attack at age 59. Three days later, the group's scheduled performance at SXSW is turned into a tribute to Chilton.
2008Heather Mills is awarded 23.7 million pounds (about $47 million) in her divorce from Paul McCartney, substantially more than the $32 million Paul offered. Throughout the ordeal, Mills is vilified in the British press as being opportunistic.More
2003On the very first episode of MTV's practical joke show Punk'd, host Ashton Kutcher stages a prank involving the IRS that makes Justin Timberlake cry.More
1992After reuniting at their ex-manager's funeral, Spinal Tap issue their 17th album, Break Like The Wind.More
1979Talking Heads make their first major TV appearance, performing "Take Me to the River" on American Bandstand. The lip-synced performance goes well, but the interview is a little awkward.More
1978The Alan Freed biopic American Hot Wax, widely considered one of the best Rock and Roll movies of all time, premieres in New York City, featuring appearances and performances by Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins.
1973The sci-fi musical Lost Horizon, scored by Burt Bacharach, bombs at the box office. The failure precipitates Bacharach's split from longtime songwriting partner Hal David and Dionne Warwick, who had performed their songs for more than a decade.More
1968Mick Jagger joins a demonstration at Grosvenor Square in London to protest the Vietnam War. When the group, estimated at 25,000, marches to the American embassy, they are met with police resistance and rioting ensues. Jagger leaves the protest before it reaches the embassy, but uses the events as inspiration for the Rolling Stones song "Street Fighting Man."
17
In Music History
2018At their St. Patrick's Day concert in Brussels, The Script buy everyone in the audience of 8,000 a drink, setting a Guinness World Record for "world's biggest round."
2017Popular World War II-era singer Vera Lynn releases Vera Lynn 100 to celebrate her 100th birthday. The album debuts at #3 on the UK chart, making her the oldest living artist to have an album on the tally.
2015Twenty One Pilots release "Fairly Local."
2012After getting pelted with cans and other trash at their SXSW performance, Rocky and the rest of A$AP Mob launch into the crowd, punching fans and igniting a brawl.
2011Ferlin Husky dies of congestive heart failure at age 85.
2009Chicago blues harmonicist Lester "Mad Dog" Davenport dies of prostate cancer at age 77.
2009Instead of getting boozed up on the streets like most people on St. Patrick's Day, Amy Winehouse gets sloppy at her court hearing in London to face charges that she attacked a fan at a charity event in 2008.
2006Professor X (founder of the hip-hop group X Clan) dies of complications from spinal meningitis at age 49.
2005Robert Plant is presented with his lifetime achievement Grammy award at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
2003Country musician Bill Carlisle dies at age 94.
2003Cliff – The Musical opens at The Prince of Wales Theatre in London. The show, which is based on the life of Cliff Richard, closes three months later.
2001Seven Pearl Jam bootleg albums from their North American tour debut in the Billboard 200 albums chart, breaking the record for most appearances on the chart in a single week that the band established the previous year, when five bootlegs from their European tour landed on the chart.More
1999Sinead O'Connor records the first ever single via the Internet in a BBC studio as part of the Tomorrow's World program. The song is a cover of Bob Marley's "Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)" recorded for the War Child charity.
First Ever Greatest Hits Album Released Courtesy of Johnny Mathis
1958
The first "Greatest Hits" compilation is released, and it's by Johnny Mathis. It's a huge hit, and the format catches on quickly. The Mathis album stays in the Billboard 200 album chart for over nine years, a record not broken until Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon.
Greatest Hits collections are typically reserved for artists who have been in the industry long enough to build a hefty catalog, but Johnny Mathis was still a fresh-faced balladeer when he released Johnny's Greatest Hits a mere two years into his recording career. Mathis wasn't trying to set a new industry trend; he was trying to keep his label, Columbia Records, at bay. But the real credit, he explained in a Songfacts interview, goes to his producer Mitch Miller:
"That was Mitch Miller's idea. That was the first time I had a chance to go out of the country and go to Great Britain. They wanted me to go in the studio and make some more recordings. I had had some success with 'It's Not for Me to Say,' and I wasn't able to record anything new, so he threw the first four recordings that I did - both sides on them - and called them Johnny's Greatest Hits. That was a little flamboyant, because it was not the greatest hits, yet. But that was a great beginning for a lot of people. Even Mozart has a Greatest Hits now. Good idea from Mitch Miller."
Aside from "It's Not For Me To Say," the album contains some of Mathis' most enduring songs, including "Chances Are," "The Twelfth Of Never," and "Wonderful! Wonderful!"
Just a few days later, Elvis Presley's Elvis' Golden Records, the first of five "Gold Records" compilations, is released and takes the #3 spot on the albums chart. Several other musicians follow suit throughout the years with great success, including the Bee Gees, ABBA, Queen, Elton John, Madonna, Michael Jackson, George Michael, Guns N' Roses, and the Eagles, whose Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) is the best-selling album of the 20th century in the US.
Staying on the chart for nearly a decade, Johnny's Greatest Hits holds the record for the longest time spent on the albums chart until Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon celebrates its 10-year anniversary on the tally in 1983.
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