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.
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.
1969 The Who release their album Tommy, a rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who plays a mean pinball.More
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."
Country Singers Release Dueling Versions Of "How Do I Live"
1997Country singers LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood release separate versions of the Diane Warren-penned ballad "How Do I Live" on the same day.
Warren wrote the ballad for the action blockbuster Con Air, starring Nicolas Cage, and initially offered it to Rimes, who was a country music sensation thanks to her Grammy-winning debut single, "Blue." The film's producer loved the ballad but wanted changes the singer wasn't willing to make, so he insisted on giving it to Trisha Yearwood. Warren agreed, but only if Rimes could still release her own version. No one is happy with the arrangement - especially Rimes, a teen who is just getting her feet wet in the music industry. "I wasn't a happy person," she tells The Associated Press, "I felt betrayed. Not by the fans but by people in the business." Yearwood is also miffed because she thought she had dibs on the song and is shocked when she learns Rimes has released another version on the same day. "The Nashville rule is, if somebody has a song on hold, you don't record it," she explains to The Chicago Tribune. "There's this kind of gentlemen's agreement that if somebody has it, you don't mess with it. But in this case I didn't think she had any kind of permission to do that, so I wasn't worried about it." Luckily, there's enough success to go around. Peaking at #2, Rimes' version stays on the Hot 100 for a record-breaking 69 weeks, while Yearwood's take goes to #2 on the Country chart. If releasing dueling versions of the same song isn't awkward enough, both singers are nominated for Best Female Country Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards for their respective renditions. Rimes sings the tune at the ceremony, but Yearwood wins the prize.
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