23 MAY
Featured Events
2010 Bret Michaels of Poison wins Season 9 of Donald Trump's show The Celebrity Apprentice.
2008 Weezer's video for "Pork and Beans," featuring a number of YouTube stars, makes its debut.More
2007 The US Library of Congress hands out the first Gershwin Award to Paul Simon for being a "performer whose lifetime contributions exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins."
2006 Dixie Chicks release Taking the Long Way, their seventh studio album. It goes on to win five Grammy Awards.
2000 A Perfect Circle release their debut album, Mer de Noms. In addition to Maynard James Keenan of Tool, the group features guitarist Billy Howerdel and drummer Josh Freese, who had been working on the Chinese Democracy album for Guns N' Roses. Mer de Noms racks up worldwide sales of well over 2 million; Chinese Democracy doesn't appear until 2008.
1997 Country singers LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood release separate versions of the Diane Warren-penned ballad "How Do I Live" on the same day.More
1979 Responding to a wave of lawsuits after refusing to transfer his contract to MCA Records, Tom Petty files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a bold move that halts the legal proceedings and forces MCA to negotiate.More
1974 Jewel Kilcher is born in Payson, Utah. Raised in Homer, Alaska, she rises to fame using just the name Jewel.
23 MAY
In Music History
2021 Chayce Beckham wins season 19 of American Idol. He's the first winner with a coronation song he wrote himself: "23," which details his battle with alcoholism.
2021 Drake wins Artist of the Decade at the Billboard Music Awards.
2015 Australia makes its inaugural entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, which is held in Vienna, Austria. The country is represented by singer and songwriter Guy Sebastian. Their invitation to compete follows a successful guest appearance from Jessica Mauboy in 2014. Sebastian finishes fifth, with the win going to Sweden's Måns Zelmerlöw.
2014 Malik Bendjelloul, who directed the Sixto Rodriguez documentary Searching For Sugar Man, commits suicide at age 36.
2012 Billboard reports that the albums of Donna Summer increase in sales by a factor of over 3000% in the week following her death on May 17 after a battle with cancer.
2008 Shirley Bassey suffers from abdominal pains in Monaco, necessitating emergency surgery and forcing her to cancel her upcoming appearance at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert.
2008 Veteran rapper Ricky "Slick Rick" Walters receives a full pardon from New York's Governor David Paterson for the attempted murders of two men in 1991, ending a long legal saga.
2006 Clifford Antone, a blues club owner and independent record label founder who mentored the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Gary Clark Jr., dies at age 56 of a possible heart attack.
2006 Jordin Sparks wins Season 6 of American Idol.
2000 Billy Corgan announces that The Smashing Pumpkins will break up at the end of the year, saying they are tired of "fighting the good fight against the Britneys of the world."
2000 Coldplay shoot the video for "Yellow" on a beach in Studland Bay, Dorset, England. The 30 or so extras are sent home because it's too cold and wet to execute the "beach party" vibe envisioned, so lead singer Chris Martin just walks around singing the song in one take. It's basic, but very effective, becoming a classic video.
1998 Steve Lacy is born in Compton, California. The neo-soul singer begins his music career as a guitarist in the alternative R&B band the Internet before going solo with his debut EP, Steve Lacy's Demo, in 2017.More
1996 The video for Metallica's "Until It Sleeps" debuts, showing the band with short hair for the first time.More
1994 Jimmy Fernandez (bassist for The God Machine) dies suddenly of a brain tumor at age 28.
1992 Totally Krossed Out by the teenage rap duo Kriss Kross hits #1 in the US. Produced by Jermaine Dupri, the title is a reference to how they wear their clothes: backwards in a look they call "krossed out."
The Who Release The Rock Opera Tommy
1969The Who release their album Tommy, a rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who plays a mean pinball.
Tommy (1969) is a lavish concept album from British rock band The Who, which spreads across two LPs. Unusual for a record by a British act, Tommy is released in the US a week earlier than in the UK - due to problems with the production of the album cover. The record is a critical and commercial success, eventually being certified double platinum in the US and selling more than 20 million copies worldwide. It also introduces a new genre: Rock Opera. The Who's guitarist and principal songwriter, Pete Townshend, has been seeking a way to move on from the 3-minute pop single after the group's early success with short-form radio-friendly songs such as "My Generation." Tommy builds on the symphonic structure of the band's experimental 9-minute epic "A Quick One While He's Away" - from The Quick One (1966), and the story-telling aesthetic of their last concept album: The Who Sell Out (1967). Tommy tells the tale of the titular hero, who is struck deaf, dumb and blind after witnessing a murder. His parents neglect him, and he suffers abuse from his cousin and uncle. He later discovers he is a master of the arcade game pinball - the lack of visual and auditory distractions enabling him to master the game by using vibrations to sense the ball's position. After a doctor realizes his affliction is mental, rather than physical, Tommy recovers his senses and starts a religious cult. Finally, after being rejected by his new-found followers, he withdraws once again. The extracted single "Pinball Wizard" becomes a hit in the UK, and the album is later developed into an acclaimed movie by Ken Russell in 1975. The cinematic version features new, re-recorded versions of the album's songs as well as some additional Townshend compositions, all of which are performed by the actors themselves. A stage musical version is also developed in 1992. Surprisingly, it takes until 1994 for a Tommy-themed pinball machine to appear, featuring imagery and sounds from the Broadway production.
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