24 APRIL
Featured Events
2007 US President George W. Bush is denied a luxury suite at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna when Mick Jagger, in town with The Rolling Stones on a tour, books it first.
1982 Kelly Clarkson is born in Fort Worth, Texas. In 2002 she becomes the first winner of American Idol, and she lives up to the hype, becoming one of the top pop stars of the next two decades.
1979 Ray Charles sings "Georgia On My Mind" at a ceremony where it is named the official state song of Georgia.
1976 With rumors of a Beatles reunion swirling, Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels goes on camera to offer the guys $3,000 (union scale) to reunite on the show. Paul McCartney and John Lennon are watching at Lennon's New York City apartment and consider showing up on a lark, but pass up the opportunity.
1975 Pete Ham of Badfinger hangs himself in his London home. 27-year-old Ham, who was the group's lead singer and primary songwriter, was despondent over the business dealings that saw the band's album Wish You Were Here pulled from stores and his income cut off. He leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend who gives birth to a daughter the following month.
1967 The Doors release a truncated version of "Light My Fire" as a single, trimming it from an album-awesome 6:50 to a radio-friendly 2:52. The group's first single, "Break On Through," didn't, but "Light My Fire" ignites, going to #1 and becoming their most famous song.
1961 Bob Dylan makes his professional recording debut when he plays harmonica on the Harry Belafonte recording of "Midnight Special." Dylan makes $50 for the session.
1942 Barbra Streisand is born in Brooklyn, New York City.More
24 APRIL
In Music History
2026 Three years after crashing into the mainstream with his third album, Stick Season, folk singer Noah Kahan releases The Great Divide. Its namesake lead single, a Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, is about the distance that fame created in his relationships.
2024 Keyboard player Mike Pinder, the last living member from the original lineup of The Moody Blues, dies at 82.
2017 Ed Sheeran's "Shape Of You" tops Australia's singles chart (ARIA) for the 14th week, breaking the record set by Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" in 1995.
2016 Philadelphia soul singer Billy Paul dies of cancer at age 81. His biggest hit, "Me And Mrs. Jones," was written by the team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. The pair release a statement upon Paul's death saying, "Billy's voice combined both jazz, R&B and soul vocals, making him one the great artists to come out of Philly and to be celebrated worldwide."
2016 Waitress, a musical about a pregnant woman trying to escape an abusive marriage by winning a pie-baking contest, opens on Broadway. The most popular number is "She Used To Be Mine," which inspires covers from several fans.More
2012 The Beach Boys begin their 50th anniversary tour, which reunites Brian Wilson with fellow founders Mike Love and Al Jardine, along with longtime members Bruce Johnston and David Marks.
2011 American Idiot: The Musical, based on Green Day's 2004 album, closes after 422 performances.
2009 Robin Thicke performs his smash hit "Lost Without U" after The Oprah Show on the "Oprah Fridays Live" segment. So many viewers complain about missing the performance that Oprah brings Robin back for an unprecedented repeat performance only one month later.
2008 Jane's Addiction reunite to rock the NME Awards.
2006 Country singer-songwriter Bonnie Owens, former wife of Buck Owens and, later, Merle Haggard, dies at age 76.
2006 Billy Joel becomes the first non-athlete to earn a banner at Madison Square Garden when he sells out the venue for the 12th time on his tour. His #12 hangs alongside retired greats who played in the Garden like Willis Reed, Walt Frazier and Mark Messier.More
2005 After 94 performances, the Broadway musical and Beach Boys tribute Good Vibrations closes.
2003 The Fox TV network airs the 2-hour special The Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See. The show contains footage of Michael Jackson's home movies, and is the superstar's rebuttal to the documentary Living with Michael Jackson, which aired in February on ABC. In that one, Jackson talks about sharing his bed with children.
2002 Pop singer Jewel breaks a collarbone and a rib when she is thrown from a horse at the Texas ranch of her boyfriend, rodeo star Ty Murray.
Michael Biopic Tells Sanitized Version Of Jackson's Life Story
2026Michael, a Michael Jackson biopic directed by Antoine Fuqua, debuts in US theaters. With his nephew Jafaar Jackson (son of Jermaine) in the title role, the film follows the King of Pop through his rise to fame in the '60s as a member of the Jackson 5 to his Bad World Tour in the '80s. The movie is a smash hit but attracts criticism for sanitizing Jackson's controversial legacy.
Michael highlights the singer's struggles growing up with an abusive father who had an iron grip on his personal and professional life until Jackson finally cut ties when his solo career took off. After being pressured to reunite with his brothers on the Victory Tour, he uses their final show to announce he'll never perform with the group again. He heads out on his first solo concert tour and the credits roll - but that isn't where the movie was supposed to end. The original third act dealt with the child sexual abuse allegations against Jackson in the '90s, but it had to be rewritten for legal reasons. A settlement with one of his accusers contained a clause that forbade any depictions of the boy in film. The omission spawns many negative reviews from critics, who accuse Fuqua and screenwriter John Logan of pandering to Jackson's die-hard fanbase by sugar-coating his legacy. In fact, Jackson's fans are more than pleased with the final product. Michael rakes in more than $888 million worldwide, making the biopic one of the highest-grossing movies of 2026. As for Fuqua, he pushes back on critics of his vision, which was ultimately to show that there was a human being behind the spectacle. "I wanted to humanize Michael," he tells Deadline in 2026. "In order to tell anything about Michael, you had to remind people about the magic of him, the power of the music, and the fun that he brought into the world and his own insecurities."
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