Pick a Day

7 DECEMBER

In Music History

2016 One Direction's Louis Tomlinson loses his 43-year-old mother, Johannah Deakin, to leukemia.

2016 Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer dies at 69 after a battle with cancer.

2015 Less than a month after their concert was invaded by terrorists and many of their fans murdered, Eagles of Death Metal make an emotional return to the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, where they lay flowers in memory of the 90 dead. They also join U2 on stage at the AccorsHotel Arena to perform Patti Smith's "People Have the Power." "Don't Let It Go Away" is performed by the Missing People Choir in a carol service at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square in the evening.

2011 The Black Keys, who won three Grammy Awards in 2011, appear on The Colbert Report. They play "Lonely Boy" and "Gold on the Ceiling."

2011 30 Seconds to Mars breaks the record for most shows performed during a single album cycle when they play their 300th concert in support of their album This Is War at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.

2010 Judas Priest announces that their Epitaph World Tour, which will run until 2012, will be their last major tour. In 2013 they change their minds and pick up right where they left off.

2008 Classics IV frontman Dennis Yost dies of respiratory failure at age 65, two years after suffering a traumatic brain injury from a fall.

2003 Mary J. Blige marries her manager, Martin "Kendu" Isaacs. She files for divorce in 2016.

1996 Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart" hits #1 in America for the first of 11 weeks.

1990 Soul singer Dee Clark, known for the 1961 hit "Raindrops," dies of a heart attack at age 52.

1987 Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, and Judy Collins (among others) appear onstage at Carnegie Hall to pay tribute to Harry Chapin, who would have been celebrating his 45th birthday.

1987 The Replacements play a drunken, disastrous show at the Pine Street Theatre in Portland, Oregon, that ends with the band throwing their clothes into the audience. It becomes part of their lore and the topic of their song "Portland."

1987 Uriah Heep become the first hard rock act to play behind the Iron Curtain in Moscow, Russia. They do 10 shows at the Olympic Stadium.

1987 Harry Chapin receives a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal for his efforts in fighting hunger. Along with Bill Ayres, Chapin founded World Hunger Year, which is later re-named WhyHunger and becomes a very effective organization in distributing food to those in need.

1987 Aaron Carter is born in Tampa, Florida, to a family that includes brother Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys. Aaron will release his self-titled debut album by the time he's 10.