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Featured Events
2016The Tragically Hip play their final concert, calling it quits at a show in lead singer Gord Downie's hometown of Kingston, Ontario. Downie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in December 2015.More
2005The Rolling Stones kick off their A Bigger Bang tour at Fenway Park in Boston (they played a warm-up show at a theater in Toronto on August 10). The tour lasts over two years and sets a record, taking in over $558 million over 144 dates (U2's 360 tour, which ends in 2011, breaks this record).
1993Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch is raided by police after a child who stayed there comes forward with allegations of molestation. Jackson lets police strip search him, which he finds very humiliating. No charges are filed, but Jackson will later deal with more allegations.
1990Alice in Chains release their debut album, Facelift, one of the first grunge albums to gain widespread popularity.More
1990Jane's Addiction release the alternative rock touchstone Ritual de lo Habitual, which frontman Perry Farrell describes as filled with "sex and violence and joy and happiness."More
1988Country singer Kacey Musgraves is born in Golden, Texas. She writes her first song, "Notice Me," at age 8 for her elementary school graduation.
1987Midnight Oil release their sixth album, Diesel and Dust, inspired by their tour of indigenous communities in the Australian Outback. The single "Beds Are Burning" - a demand to give Aboriginal Australians back their rightful land - is the band's breakthrough hit in the US.More
1982Bono of U2 marries his high school sweetheart Alison Stewart at the Guinness Church of Ireland. The couple will have four children.
1952Punk rocker Joe Strummer (of The Clash) is born John Graham Mellor in Ankara, Turkey.
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In Music History
2017During a historic solar eclipse, Bonnie Tyler sings "Total Eclipse Of The Heart," while Ozzy Osbourne performs "Bark At The Moon."More
2015When the Westboro Baptist Church, famous for their anti-gay demonstrations, stage a protest before a Foo Fighters concert in Kansas City, the band responds by driving a truck in front of the demonstrators and Rickrolling them by blasting Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."More
2013Sid Bernstein (music promoter for The Beatles and manager for The (Young) Rascals and Tony Bennett) dies in Manhattan, New York, at age 95.
2012With 623,000 digital copies sold, Taylor Swift's hit "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" becomes the single with the most digital sales for a female artist.
2012Lynyrd Skynyrd releases Last of a Dyin' Breed, their fourteenth studio album. Guitarist John Lowery, better known by stage name "John 5," contributes to a couple of the tracks.
2011Rod Stewart's becomes a grandfather for the first time when his daughter Kimberly gives birth to her own daughter, Delilah Genoveva del Toro (the result of a liaison with actor Benicio del Toro).
2009Doo-wop/R&B singer Johnny Carter (of The Dells and The Flamingos) dies of lung cancer in Harvey, Illinois, at age 75.
2005Electronic music pioneer Robert Moog, who invented the Moog synthesizer, dies of a brain tumor in Asheville, North Carolina, at age 71.
1998Terence Trent D'Arby, not heard from since his 1995 album Vibrator, posts on his website: "I am a holographic representation in the third dimension of what was requested by your souls that one of your favourite artists be. I sent a portion of my soul to embody as an artist called Terence Trent D'Arby to favour that request." He later explains that he is using a new name: Sananda Maitreya, which came to him in a dream.
1997Be Here Now, the hotly anticipated third album from Oasis, is launched to mixed reviews. Critical opinion is initially overwhelmingly positive but is later revised as the public find the album bloated and derivative. Britpop is beginning to fall out of favor, and despite entering the albums chart at #2, sales are much lower than expected.
1996Rick James gets out of jail after serving two years of a five-year sentence for holding a woman hostage during a drug binge.
1994John Denver crashes his 1963 Porsche into a tree near his home in Aspen, Colorado, exactly one year after a previous arrest for driving while impaired.
1993Elton John's longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin marries his third wife, Stephanie Haymes.
1993John Denver blows a .14 when his Porsche is pulled over in Aspen, Colorado, where the legal limit is .10. He pleads guilty to driving while impaired and is sentenced to 28 hours of community service, which includes performing a benefit concert for the Tipsy Taxi service.
Sleepless In Seattle Soundtrack Hits #1
1993
For one week, standards outsell rap as the soundtrack to the hit romantic comedy Sleepless In Seattle knocks Cypress Hill's Black Sunday off the top of the Billboard 200.
Hearing his voice over the radio, Meg Ryan falls in love with widower Tom Hanks in Nora Ephron's romantic comedy Sleepless In Seattle. The plot unfolds to a soundtrack laden with standards from Jimmy Durante ("As Time Goes By"), Louis Armstrong ("A Kiss To Build A Dream On") and Nat King Cole ("Stardust"), with interpretations from Carly Simon ("In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning") and Celine Dion with Clive Griffin ("When I Fall In Love"). Harry Connick, Jr., whose career got a boost from a throwback soundtrack four years earlier for When Harry Met Sally, another Ephron-penned film starring Meg Ryan, contributed the original song "A Wink and A Smile." The latter earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.
The movie renews public interest in standards and propels the soundtrack to #1, giving hope to modern crooners like Connick Jr. and the forthcoming Michael Buble. Other romantic comedies follow suit, stacking their soundtracks with tunes from the Great American Songbook. The following year, the Nicolas Cage/Bridget Fonda film It Could Happen To You, its very name borrowed from a classic love song, tells the story of another New York romance to the strains of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Billie Holiday, though the soundtrack album fails to chart.
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