8 MAY
Featured Events
2015 In Tulsa, Rush begin their R40 Live tour, playing their newer songs first and working backward to "Working Man," the song that launched them in America. It ends up being their last tour, as drummer Neil Peart develops brain cancer and dies in 2020.
1993 The comeback is complete as Aerosmith's Get a Grip album debuts at #1, marking their first trip to the top of the album charts.
1981 Lionel Richie and Diana Ross meet at a Reno, Nevada recording studio at 3:30 a.m., where they record vocals for "Endless Love," needed quickly so it can be inserted into the film of the same name. Richie flew in from Los Angeles; Ross drove up after her concert in Lake Tahoe. The song becomes one of the biggest hits of the decade.
1976 John Sebastian's "Welcome Back," the theme song to the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, hits #1 in America. The series was originally called Kotter, but after Sebastian wrote the song, the title was changed to accommodate (Sebastian tried writing a song called "Kotter," but could only rhyme that word with "otter").
1970 The Beatles release their final studio album, Let It Be, in the UK. Its American release date is May 18.
1965 D.A. Pennebaker films Bob Dylan in one of the earliest music videos ever shot, the famous "flashcard" clip for "Subterranean Homesick Blues."More
1965 On their first American tour, The Rolling Stones stop in Jacksonville, Florida. In the audience is 17-year-old Ronnie Van Zant, who decides then and there that he wants to be a singer in a rock band. He later forms Lynyrd Skynyrd.
1963 The Beatles land their first #1 hit when "From Me to You" tops the UK chart. The song goes nowhere in America, where word of The Beatles is still just a whisper.
8 MAY
In Music History
2022 Bono and The Edge of U2 play an acoustic set at a subway station in Kyiv that has been converted into a bomb shelter. Their appearance is in support of Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia months earlier.
2012 Fiona Apple releases "Every Single Night," her first new song since 2005. The song is a visceral expression of her internal struggle, as she sings about how every single night is a fight with her brain.
2012 Tom Gabel, lead singer of the Florida punk band Against Me!, comes out as transgender and announces he will undergo gender reassignment surgery, becoming Laura Jane Grace.More
2009 San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders declares "Adam Lambert Day" after Lambert's performance of "Black Or White" and "Mad World" on American Idol.
2008 Country singer Eddy Arnold dies in Nashville, Tennessee, a week before his 90th birthday.
2008 Crosby Loggins, son of Kenny Loggins, wins the first and only season of MTV's Rock The Cradle, a singing competition featuring the offspring of celebrity musicians. Runners-up are Jesse Blaze Snider, son of Twisted Sister's Dee Snider and Chloe Lattanzi, daughter of Olivia Newton-John.
2001 The road manager for Insane Clown Posse is arrested at an Omaha show for attacking an Eminem supporter who was tossing M&M candies on stage to taunt ICP about their Detroit rival.
2001 Clint Black and his wife Lisa Hartman Black welcome their daughter Lily Pearl Black.
2001 Sum 41 release their debut studio album, All Killer, No Filler.
1999 Jazz singer Leon Thomas dies of heart failure at age 62.
1995 Rick Nelson receives a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1993 The newly formed Backstreet Boys give their very first public performance, at SeaWorld Orlando.
1992 Will Smith (AKA the Fresh Prince) marries a songwriter named Sheree Zampino, who is pregnant with their son Trey. The couple will divorce in 1995.
1991 Bohemian-born pianist Rudolf Serkin dies of cancer at age 88.
1990 A jury orders Frito-Lay to pay the famously anti-advertising Tom Waits $2.6 million for imitating his voice in a Doritos radio commercial that transforms his song "Step Right Up" into an ad for their SalsaRio flavor chips. In 1992, the verdict is upheld on appeal.
French Filmmaker Michel Gondry Is Born
1963Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is born in Versailles, France. The imaginative director is also known for his surreal music videos for artists like Bjork, The White Stripes, The Chemical Brothers, and others.
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