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Featured Events
2013 Beyoncé invigorates the 2013 Super Bowl halftime show with a performance that reunites Destiny's Child.More
2003 Phil Spector is charged with murder after police are called to his 33-room mansion in Alhambra, California, and discover the actress Lana Clarkson dead from a gunshot wound.More
1989 "Wild Thing" by Tone Loc becomes the first rap single certified Platinum, with sales of over a million.
1976 David Bowie opens his US tour with a new persona: The Thin White Duke. He's dressed in a black-vested suit with slicked-back hair. Bowie later described the persona as "a nasty character indeed."
1960 Frank Sinatra launches the first fully artist-owned label, Reprise Records (pronounced "repreeze"), so he can own his own masters. Some of his cohorts, including Dean Martin and Rosemary Clooney, join the label, which is sold to Warner Brothers in 1963, where it becomes home to a number of famous acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell and Green Day.
3 FEBRUARY
In Music History
2021 TJ Osborne of the Brothers Osborne comes out as gay in an interview with Time, making him the first openly gay country artist signed to a major label.
2019 In Atlanta, 21 Savage is arrested in an immigration crackdown and detained for nine days. It's revealed that he was born in England and has been living as an undocumented immigrant since his visa expired in 2006. During his detention he watches the Grammy Awards, where he's nominated for Record Of The Year for his Post Malone collaboration "Rockstar." He finally gets his green card in 2023.
2015 Former Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight is rushed to the hospital after pleading not guilty in his connection with a fatal hit-and-run just days before. His friend Terry Carter was killed in the incident and actor Cle Denyale Sloan was injured during an altercation over the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. Knight faces charges of murder and attempted murder, along with two counts of hit-and-run.
2001 Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me," based on an Eddie Murphy routine about what to do when you get caught cheating, goes to #1 in America.
1997 David Bowie releases the electronica-influenced album Earthling, including the Grammy-nominated song (Best Male Rock Vocal Performance) "Dead Man Walking," and the paranoia-tinged track "I'm Afraid Of Americans," featuring Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.
1994 Tori Amos charts on the Hot 100 for the first time with "God" from her sophomore solo album, Under The Pink. It peaks at #72.
1990 Sean Kingston is born in Miami.
1986 The Firm release Mean Business, their second and final album.
1981 At The Who concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London, Pete Townshend drinks four bottles of brandy onstage, and instead of playing, mouths off to the crowd. His bandmates just keep playing without him. Months later, Townshend gets treatment for his alcoholism but turns to drugs, once again putting his life in danger. In early 1982, he rehabs again and finally gets sober.
1980 Studio 54 throws one last bash with A-list regulars Diana Ross, Andy Warhol and Richard Gere before the owners, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, go to jail for tax evasion.
1979 20 years after the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Del Shannon and The Drifters perform a tribute show in Clear Lake, Iowa, where Holly's last concert took place.
1979 "Y.M.C.A." by The Village People goes to #2 in America, where it stays for three weeks, unable to overtake fellow disco stalwarts "Le Freak" and "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" In many other territories, including Australia, Canada and the UK, the song goes to #1.
1979 The Blues Brothers' album Briefcase Full of Blues hits #1 in the US - not bad for two comedians (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) who formed the duo for Saturday Night Live.
1978 The TV-movie Dead Man's Curve, the first to deal with the tragic Jan & Dean story, premieres on ABC.
1978 Harry Chapin, who has started an organization to fight hunger called World Hunger Year, meets with US President Jimmy Carter to discuss the project.
The Day The Music Died
1959Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed in a plane crash. Don McLean would call it "The Day the Music Died" in his 1971 hit "American Pie."
The musicians were heading to Fargo, North Dakota, on a small private plane leaving Clear Lake Iowa, where they had performed as part of the 24-city "Winter Dance Party" tour. They had been travelling by bus, but it got so cold that Holly chartered the plane, a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza. Shortly after takeoff, the plane goes down; it is snowing and poor visibility likely leads to the crash. Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings, also on the tour, are spared by sheer luck: Allsup lost a coin flip for a seat on the plane to Valens, and Jennings let Richardson have the other seat. Losing these musical luminaries drastically alters the rock and roll landscape; the "rock era" had begun about four years earlier, and with Elvis Presley in the Army, there are few stars to propel it forward (the British Invasion would revive the genre). Holly, 22, the headliner on the tour, was a rising star with a #1 hit under his belt ("That'll Be The Day"). Valens, 17, was one of the hottest new artists at the time, with the song "Donna" on the charts. Don McLean, who was a teenager at the time, would call it "The Day the Music Died" in his 1971 hit "American Pie."
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