16 MARCH
Featured Events
2019 "Old Town Road" by the rapper Lil Nas X makes the Country chart, but is removed the following week when Billboard declares it ineligible for the tally. The attention leads to a remix with Billy Ray Cyrus that goes to #1 on the genre-agnostic Hot 100.More
1999 Pearl Jam's debut album Ten is certified Diamond for sales of over 10 million copies in America.
1995 Eazy-E releases a statement announcing that he has AIDS, and also that he has fathered seven children with six different women. He dies 10 days later.
1991 Eddie Van Halen and his wife Valerie Bertinelli welcome a son, Wolfgang Van Halen, who eventually becomes the bass player in Van Halen.
1972 The Dripping Springs Reunion festival kicks off in a field near Austin, Texas. Envisioned as the Woodstock of country music, the 3-day event features performances by Willie Nelson, Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Kris Kristofferson, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens and Dottie West. The festival is poorly promoted and a huge flop, with attendance estimated at about 20,000 (combined) when at least 180,000 were expected. Two years later, Willie Nelson uses the same site for the first of his Fourth of July Picnic concerts, which becomes a popular annual event and helps establish Austin as a music destination.
1968 Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay" hits #1, becoming the first-ever posthumous #1 hit. Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967.More
1945 The #1 song in America is "Rum and Coca-Cola" by The Andrews Sisters. It's a sanitized cover of a calypso song about American servicemen in Trinidad who get drunk and solicit prostitutes.
16 MARCH
In Music History
2020 Chris Martin takes to Instagram to perform a virtual concert in support of the World Health Organization as the coronavirus pandemic takes hold. It's the first of a series of "Together At Home" concerts done by a variety of artists.
2019 Surf rock pioneer Dick Dale dies at 81.
2017 Ed Sheeran launches his ÷ (Divide) tour in Turin, Italy. The trek lasts two-and-a-half years and breaks U2's record for highest-grossing tour, raking in $775.6 million on 255 dates. U2's 360 tour (2009-2011) took in $735.3 million.
2017 Ray Davies, frontman of The Kinks, is knighted for services to the arts by the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace.
2016 Frank Sinatra Jr., the only son of Frank Sinatra, dies of a heart attack at age 72 while on tour in Daytona Beach, Florida.
2013 Bobbie Smith of The Spinners dies of pneumonia and influenza at age 76.
2011 Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine collapses backstage at a concert in Russia. He was in extreme pain from kidney stones but insisted on performing six songs for the crowd before going to the hospital 30 minutes later.
2009 Songwriter Jack Lawrence dies at age 96 after he falls at his home in Redding, Connecticut. He co-wrote Frank Sinatra's first solo hit, "All or Nothing at All."
2008 Session drummer Ola Brunkert, who played on many ABBA recordings, dies at age 61.
2008 Daniel MacMaster (lead singer of Bonham) dies of a staph infection at age 39.
2007 Tupper Saussy of The Neon Philharmonic dies of a heart attack at age 70.
2005 Singer-songwriter Elizabeth Janie Coffey loses an action in England's High Court for copyright infringement in her claim that Madonna's song "Nothing Really Matters" infringed on a song Coffey had written earlier.
2002 Liza Minnelli takes her fourth trip down the aisle when she marries promoter David Gest in New York. Michael Jackson serves as best man and Elizabeth Taylor is matron of honor.
2000 Jay-Z and Beyoncé meet for the first time at MTV's Spring Break festival in Cancun, where both are performing (Bey with her group, Destiny's Child). They go on their first date two years later.
Michelle Obama Tells SXSW: "Let Girls Learn"
2016First Lady Michelle Obama delivers the keynote address at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, promoting her "Let Girls Learn" initiative and launching the star-studded Diane Warren-penned anthem "This Is For My Girls."
Armed with a staggering statistic, Michelle Obama tells the crowd at the SXSW Music Festival that over 62 million girls worldwide are not in school, but the "Let Girls Learn" initiative seeks to help adolescent girls overcome the cultural and economical barriers that prevent them receiving an education. "We can change the world, we can have an impact on these girls and they don't know we're doing it," she says. Part of that change can happen through music, a powerful touchstone that can unite women across the globe and encourage them to pursue their dreams. To support the project, Obama enlisted a group of female artists - including Zendaya, Kelly Clarkson, Janelle Monae, Lea Michele - to sing the girl power anthem "This Is For My Girls," written by Diane Warren. After her speech, Obama joins a keynote panel that includes Missy Elliott and Queen Latifah, who both appear on the charity single, and One Tree Hill actress Sophia Bush. The panel discusses the music that shaped them into powerful women, with Obama crediting Stevie Wonder for making her "think about how you could affect the world," and Latifah recalling her own tune "Ladies First," while Elliott points to Salt-N-Pepa and MC Lyte. Obama even turns to music when reflecting on her time at the White House, singing a snippet of "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday."
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