16 NOVEMBER
Featured Events
2010 For the first time, The Beatles' music is made available for digital download, as iTunes adds most of the group's catalog. Apple Computer spent decades battling the Beatles' Apple Corps record label over the rights to sell music using the Apple name, but a 2007 agreement allowed the companies to work together, setting the stage for the deal.
2008 MTV's Total Request Live ends after 10 seasons with a special three-hour finale. Guests include several of the countdown's mainstays, including Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Eminem, and Britney Spears. Britney's "...Baby One More Time" takes the top spot on the final tally, which presents the Top 10 most iconic music videos.More
1996 The Beatles become the first act with three #1 albums the same year in America when their Anthology 3 compilation goes to the top.
1978 Replicating their infamous promo stunt for the single, Queen are joined onstage at Madison Square Garden by several dozen nude, rotund women during their performance of "Bicycle Race." (Rotund because the single mentions "Fat Bottomed Girls," the title of the other half of the A-side.)
1975 The variety show Donny & Marie, starring Donny and Marie Osmond, debuts on ABC. Their theme song is "May Tomorrow Be A Perfect Day," but the show becomes synonymous with a different tune: "A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock N' Roll." More
1974 John Lennon's "Whatever Gets You Thru The Night" hits #1 in America. Elton John, who sang and played piano on the track, had bet Lennon that it would hit the top spot. As the bet's loser, Lennon has to join Elton on stage at a Madison Square Garden concert, which he does on November 28 to a manic ovation.
1963 Nino Tempo and April Stevens' "Deep Purple" hits #1 in the US. The famous band later name themselves after the song.
16 NOVEMBER
In Music History
2023 Daryl Hall files a lawsuit against John Oates, exposing a rift in the famously amiable duo. Hall's suit is an attempt to keep Oates from selling his shares of their publishing royalties, a move he calls "the ultimate partnership betrayal."
2019 After 1,730 performances, Donny and Marie Osmond play their last show at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, where they started their residency in 2008.
2018 Songwriter Scott English, whose compositions include "Bend Me, Shape Me" and "Mandy," dies at 81.
2015 Ween announce that they will come together to play two shows in early 2016. This is the first time the band will be together since their breakup in 2012.
2006 The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sends 417 more letters to sixteen college administrators threatening mass lawsuits if file-sharing is found happening on university servers.
2006 Queen's Greatest Hits is declared the most popular album of all time in Britain, with more than 5.5 million units sold. The Beatles come in second with Sgt. Pepper.
2005 I Walk the Line: A Night for Johnny Cash airs on CBS, with U2, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Lee Lewis and several others paying tribute to the singer.
2005 Pink Floyd, The Kinks and Eurythmics are among the honorees inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. The second annual show, which takes place in a ceremony at London's Alexandra Palace, features some momentous reunions, including the gathering of the original Kinks and a performance by the classic line-up of Black Sabbath, featuring Ozzy Osbourne.
2002 Blues pianist and singer Mose Vinson, known for "Blues with a Feeling" and "Sweet Root Man," dies of diabetes at age 85.
2001 Havana's National Theatre debuts Se Seco el Arroyito (The Brooklet Dried Up), a musical written by Cuba's veteran "sonero," Compay Segundo.
2001 The city of Palm Springs, California, unveils a statue in its downtown area honoring the late Sonny Bono, half of Sonny and Cher and mayor of the city for a time in the '80s.
2000 English pianist Russ Conway, known for the 1959 UK #1 hits "Side Saddle" and "Roulette," dies of cancer at age 75.
2000 Jewel becomes one of the first artists to stream a concert online, doing so to benefit an organization working to bring clean water to those who need it.
2000 Joseph "Joe C." Calleja (Kid Rock's hype man), plagued by a host of medical issues, dies at age 26.
2000 29-year-old rapper DJ Screw (real name: Robert Earl Davis, Jr.) is found dead in a Houston recording studio. The coroner finds large amounts of codeine and other prescription drugs in his system.
"We Built This City" Rises To #1
1985"We Built This City" by Starship hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It is later named Worst Song of All Time by Blender magazine.
The song takes aim at greedy corporations that are destroying the live music scene in LA. Written by Elton John's longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin and pop scribe Martin Page (frontman of the English synthpop group Q-Feel), it originally had a much darker vibe until Starship's producers refashioned it into a chorus-heavy single for hit appeal. According to Page, there's still an edge that punctures the song's glossy exterior. He told Songfacts: "If you stop and listen to the lyrics and the verses … We're listening to something that is quite sophisticated and oriented towards keeping back some of the dark side of corporations. So it's very interesting that if you look deeper into that song, you'll see that there's a darker strain going through it." Blender isn't buying it. "It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of '80s corporate-rock commercialism," says the magazine's editor Craig Marks. "It's a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the '80s."
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