10 MAY
Featured Events
2006 Chris Daughtry gets voted off Season 5 of American Idol in a shocker, as he is favored to win. He finishes fourth, with Taylor Hicks claiming the victory.
1999 Shel Silverstein, the prolific author of beloved children's books who was also a top songwriter, dies of a massive heart attack at age 68. He wrote "A Boy Named Sue" for Johnny Cash.More
1994 Weezer release their self-titled debut (aka The Blue Album).
1991 Bushwick Bill of the Geto Boys gets a signature look when he loses his right eye after being shot by his girlfriend.
1986 Paul Simon plays three songs from his upcoming Graceland album on Saturday Night Live. He's backed by South African musicians, including the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who perform with him on "Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes." With South Africa under a cultural boycott in an attempt to stop Apartheid, its music is sequestered. Simon's appearance with musicians from the country and the subsequent album introduce the sound to a global audience, but also cause problems for Simon when he faces criticism for violating the boycott.
1981 Kraftwerk release their eighth studio album, Computer World, featuring prescient songs about the influence of computers on society.More
1975 Stevie Wonder headlines the fourth annual "Human Kindness Day" festival in Washington, DC. Belying the name of the festival, many in the estimated crowd of 125,000 turn violent, and hundreds of robberies and assaults are reported.
1899 Fred Astaire is born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska. After appearing with his sister Adele on the Broadway stage, he becomes a Hollywood star.
10 MAY
In Music History
2023 In Stockholm, Beyoncé kicks off her Renaissance tour, her first since her Formation tour in 2016. Among her accessories: Tiffany in-ear monitors with 4.5-carat diamonds.
2019 The #FreeBritney movement gains traction as supporters gather outside the Los Angeles courthouse where Britney Spears speaks to a judge about her conservatorship. Spears has been under the conservatorship, a legal maneuver typically used to protect the elderly or mentally incompetent, since 2008, with her father, Jamie Spears, conservator.
2018 Responding to the #MuteRKelly campaign, Spotify removes R. Kelly and XXXTentacion from playlists as part of a new policy against "hate content" and "hateful conduct." The capricious policy is rescinded two weeks later after an industry backlash.
2018 Scott Hutchison, the 36-year-old lead singer of the Scotish band Frightened Rabbit, is found dead after going missing a day earlier.
2016 Justin Timberlake performs his new single "Can't Stop the Feeling" in the interval of the Eurovision Song Contest as the show is broadcast in America for the first time. His appearance in Stockholm, Sweden, leads to speculation that the USA will be invited to enter the song competition, following the successful addition of Australia to the line-up in 2015.
2011 The Cars, disbanded since 1988, release their album Move Like This and kick off a tour with a concert at the Showbox in Seattle. It doesn't go well: tensions soon resurface, and the tour is cut short after less than a month. They don't play together again until their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2018.
2011 Norma Zimmer, The Lawrence Welk Show's longtime "Champagne Lady," dies at age 87.
2010 In tribute to the recently deceased Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell, Jose Feliciano performs the US national anthem before the Tigers/Yankees game at Tiger Stadium. In 1968, Harwell had Feliciano sing the anthem before a Tigers World Series game, and the 23-year-old blind Puerto Rican singer responded by playing the first non-traditional rendition of the song at a major sporting event. He and Harwell took a lot of heat, but in later years, it became common for singers to put their own spin on the song.
2009 Songwriter/historian Julie Coryell dies at 61.
2005 British soul and R&B singer Seal marries celebrity model Heidi Klum. The couple had been dating since 2004, when Klum gave birth to her daughter Leni, sired by her previous boyfriend; Seal was present at the birth and Klum announced that Seal would adopt Leni as her father. The couple have three biological children together before their divorce in 2012.
2003 #1 Billboard Album: Madonna's American Life
2003 Matthew West marries his long term girlfriend, Emily.
1994 Philadelphia rhymers G. Love & Special Sauce release their self-titled debut album, featuring "Cold Beverage" and "Baby's Got Sauce."
1994 Serial killer John Gacy, the subject of songs by Sufjan Stevens and Jane's Addiction, is executed for the murders of 33 young men and boys.
1992 Jazz singer Sylvia Syms (not to be confused with the actress Sylvia Syms) dies from a heart attack onstage at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
Bono Is Born
1960Paul Hewson is born in Dublin. He shortens his nickname from Bono Vox (Latin for "good voice") to simply Bono and fronts the band U2.
Bono meet his bandmates David "The Edge" Evans, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. while attending Mount Temple Comprehensive School and starts out playing guitar before switching to lead vocals. The son of a Catholic father and Protestant mother, Bono's early lyrics reflect his attempts to understand his spirituality; "Gloria," from the band's second album, October, is an exaltation pulled from the pages of the Bible and introduces U2 to the MTV audience. The religious thread runs through much of the band's catalog, but Bono's scope widens to address social and political concerns as their next album, War, opens with the protest anthem "Sunday Bloody Sunday," a painful reminder of the violence surrounding The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The band's experimentation isn't limited to their lyrical themes as they follow up the rock-fueled War with the ambient Unforgettable Fire. By the time they release their fifth album, The Joshua Tree (1987), a blues-and-country-inflected treatise of America, the group is widely hailed as the greatest rock band in the world. And it seems they know it, closing out the decade with Rattle and Hum, a bombastic tribute to rock gods that briefly sours their rep with critics. A new decade brings a new Bono – several, actually. Achtung Baby, a foray into industrial music and EDM, finds the frontman trying on different identities, from the crooked televangelist "Mirror Ball Man," to the slick rocker "The Fly" to the Devil's sidekick "MacPhisto." The accompanying Zoo TV Tour restores U2 to their former glory as they shift into the second half of their career, steadily reaching the upper echelon of the albums chart with six more acclaimed releases. Following Bono's lead is a safe bet, as long as you're cautious, says Bob Dylan, who collaborated with the singer on "Love Rescue Me": "Spending time with Bono was like eating dinner on a train - feels like you're moving, going somewhere. Bono's got the soul of an ancient poet and you have to be careful around him. He can roar 'til the earth shakes."
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