21 NOVEMBER
Featured Events
2000 Backstreet Boys release their fourth album, Black & Blue. Catering to the screaming teenage girl demographic, they promote it with an appearance on MTV's Total Request Live. The album is one of biggest debuts in history, with initial shipments of about 6 million.More
1992 Adam Sandler sings "The Thanksgiving Song" on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update.More
1991 An animated Aerosmith perform "Walk This Way" on the "Flaming Moe's" episode of The Simpsons. The band is one of the first musical guests on the show.
1987 "Mony Mony" by Billy Idol replaces "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany at #1 in the US. Both songs were originally recorded in the '60s by Tommy James & the Shondells.More
1981 The Queen/David Bowie collaboration "Under Pressure" goes to #1 in the UK, Queen's first chart-topper there since "Bohemian Rhapsody."
21 NOVEMBER
In Music History
2017 David Cassidy dies at age 67 after suffering liver and kidney failure. The Partridge Family star made headlines earlier in the year when he was diagnosed with dementia.
2014 David Guetta releases Listen, his sixth studio album.
2008 Bruce Springsteen's title track from his forthcoming Working On A Dream album hits radio.
2006 Black Eyed Peas take home three awards at the 2006 American Music Awards, held at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium and broadcast live on ABC. The Peas, which accept the awards via satellite from Costa Rica, are named favorite group in the soul/R&B and rap/hip-hop categories, and pick up honors for favorite album (Monkey Business) in the rap/hip-hop genre.
2003 The acoustic guitar on which George Harrison learned how to play is sold at a London auction for 276,000 pounds. The original price of the guitar: three and one-half pounds.
2003 Pop singer-songwriter Teddy Randazzo, who penned hits for Little Anthony & the Imperials, dies at age 68.
2002 Hadda Brooks, known for the '40s R&B hit "Out of the Blue," dies following open-heart surgery at age 86.
2001 Jonathan King is sentenced to seven years in prison for a series of sexual assaults on teenage boys between 1982 and 1987.
1999 Singer/actor Alvin Cash (of The Crawlers) dies of ulcer complications at age 60.
1997 Coolio and seven members of his band 40 Thevz are arrested and charged with theft and assault in a boutique in the town of Boblingen, Germany. The eight are charged with assaulting a female clerk in a clothing store and stealing clothing worth $2,000.
1995 Bruce Springsteen releases The Ghost Of Tom Joad.
1995 The Beatles release Anthology I (including the previously unreleased track "Free As A Bird," and sell 450,000 copies the first day).
1995 Matthew Ashman (Bow Wow Wow guitarist) dies of complications from diabetes at age 35.
1995 Peter Grant (manager for The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, and Bad Company) dies of a heart attack at age 60.
1995 DC Talk release Jesus Freak, an album that breaks new ground in contemporary Christian music by blending alternative rock and hip-hop. It sells over 2 million copies and influences artists like Lecrae who keep pushing the boundaries.
"Physical" Hits #1 On Its Way To Becoming The Biggest Hit Of 1981
1981"Physical" by Olivia Newton-John hits #1 in the US. The sweaty aerobics anthem stays at the top spot for 10 weeks, making it the biggest hit of 1981.
Instead of writing another song about the vagaries of love, songwriters Terry Shaddick and Steve Kipner come up with "Physical," a very obvious ode to sex that somehow eludes scrutiny, possibly because of Olivia Newton-John's squeaky clean image. The song catches fire thanks to the aerobics craze and a video that gets played incessantly on MTV, which launched just a few months earlier. Another surprising non-controversy: the gay overtones in the video. Near the end of the clip, the fat guys who have been sweating away this whole time are replaced with fit, muscular dudes who pair off in a locker room. Seemingly shocking stuff at a time when even Elton John was still posing as heterosexual, but somehow subtle enough to avoid detection. Perhaps viewers are distracted by Newton-John in her workout wear.
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