29 MARCH
Featured Events
1993 "A Whole New World" from the Disney animated film Aladdin wins the Academy Award for Best Song.
1980 Brian Johnson of the band Geordie gets a new, slightly more high-profile gig: replacing the deceased Bon Scott in AC/DC. Johnson's first album with the band is Back In Black, which becomes the second-best selling album worldwide behind Thriller.More
1978 After a tumultuous ordeal that lasted nearly two years, Tina Turner is officially divorced from husband Ike. She gets nothing in the settlement except her name; born Anna Mae Bullock, it was Ike who named her "Tina Turner" when they started performing together.
1975 Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" hits #1 in America as listeners track down French speakers to translate the line, "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir." ("Do you want to sleep with me tonight?")
1975 Led Zeppelin becomes the first band in history to have six entries on the Billboard Albums chart at once. Their latest release, Physical Graffiti, is at #1, with their previous five albums also on the chart: Led Zeppelin IV (#83), House of the Holy (#92), Led Zeppelin II (#104), Led Zeppelin (#116) and Led Zeppelin III (#124). They rarely release singles, which boosts their album sales.
1973 Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show, who have a hit with "The Cover Of 'Rolling Stone'," appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.More
1959 Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell is born Peretz Bernstein in Queens, New York City. His stage name is a play on the word "peripheral," in the sense that he's "on the edge." Farrell fronts the bands Jane's Addiction and Porno For Pyros, but is most famous for launching the Lollapalooza music festival.
29 MARCH
In Music History
2022 Eric Church cancels an upcoming concert in San Antonio so he can watch his beloved North Carolina Tar Heels take on Duke in the Final Four.
2020 Alan Merrill of The Arrows, who co-wrote "I Love Rock And Roll," dies at 69, one of the first high-profile musicians to succumb to coronavirus.
2020 With most of the world homebound as the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, Elton John hosts the "Living Room Concert For America" from his home, featuring virtual performances by Mariah Carey, H.E.R., Backstreet Boys, and Tim McGraw. The concert raises money to help local food banks and support first responders during the crisis.More
2019 Seventeen-year-old Billie Eilish releases her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, which debuts at #1 in America.
2010 Ricky Martin comes out as gay, posting on his website, "Writing this is a solid step towards my inner peace and vital part of my evolution. I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man."
2009 Nickelback rule the Juno Awards, winning Album of the Year, Group of the Year and the Fan Choice Award.
2006 Tom Jones is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
2005 Neil Young has brain surgery to remove an aneurysm. His vision became blurry at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies, and a subsequent checkup discovered the aneurysm.
2005 Weezer release "Beverly Hills," the lead single from their Make Believe album.
2001 A tribute to Brian Wilson is held at Radio City Music Hall, with Paul Simon, Elton John and Billy Joel all performing Beach Boys songs.
2001 John Lewis of The Modern Jazz Quartet dies of prostate cancer at age 80.
1999 Jazz singer Joe Williams dies at age 80.
1996 Phil Spector's former bandmates in The Teddy Bears, Carol Connors and Marshall Lieb, sue the producer to collect royalties they claim are still owed from the group's 1958 smash "To Know Him Is To Love Him."
1994 K-pop singer and actress Sulli is born at Seongnam, South Korea.
1994 The Crow soundtrack is released. Featuring "Burn" by The Cure, it reaches number one on the charts.
Beyoncé Cowboys Up With Groundbreaking Country Album
2024Beyoncé drops Cowboy Carter, a sassy country album (mostly) with 27 tracks and appearances by Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and an unheralded Black country singer named Linda Martell, whose only album was released in 1970. When Cowboy Carter tops the Country chart, it makes Beyoncé the first Black woman to do so.
The album plays like a road trip, with the songs playing on an old-time country radio station in Texas (KNTRY). Some songs are introduced by DJs on the station, voiced by Parton, Nelson, and Martell. Beyoncé first dipped her toe into country music in 2016 with her song "Daddy Lessons," which she performed at the Country Music Association Awards that year with the Dixie Chicks, the outspoken trio that polarized the country community with their outspoken political views. Beyoncé's appearance earned huge ratings and rapturous applause, but in the aftermath some pundits kicked up dirt by questioning if she belonged in the genre. She hinted at this when she explained why she made the album: "The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me." Cowboy Carter was five years in the making, the second part of a trilogy that started with her 2022 album Renaissance. The plan was to release Cowboy Carter first, but she decided the highly danceable Renaissance was a better fit coming out of the pandemic. Beyoncé kept the project under wraps until the 2024 Super Bowl, when she said "Drop the new music" at the end of a Verizon commercial, and the first two singles suddenly appeared: "Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages." Both songs have plenty of twang and come with visuals showing Bey in a cowboy hat. "Texas Hold 'Em" takes off, going to #1 not just on the Hot 100 but also on the Country chart, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to lead that tally. It's marketed as a country album, but many of the songs on Cowboy Carter don't fit that genre at all, with a modern pop and R&B sound. But what is country anyway? On the opening track, "Ameriican Requiem" (the double "ii" shows up in some of the song titles because the album is "act ii" of her trilogy), she mentions her roots in Alabama, Texas and Louisiana, and asks, "If that ain't country, tell me what is?" In Linda Martell's intro to "Spaghettii," she says, "Genres are a funny little concept, aren't they?" Beyoncé makes her position clear when she states, "This ain't a Country album. This is a 'Beyoncé' album."
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