5 NOVEMBER
Featured Events
2012 With one day to go until the United States presidential election, dozens of music stars take to the press to support incumbent Barack Obama over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Those voicing support for Obama include Jay-Z, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Bruce Springsteen, Katy Perry, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, and Stevie Wonder. This should come as no surprise, as music celebrities traditionally come out to support the progressive candidate in elections.
2002 Justin Timberlake releases his debut solo album, Justified. It debuts at #2 in America and earns Top 5 entries with the singles "Cry Me A River" and "Rock Your Body."
1999 Van Halen announce that lead singer Gary Cherone, who joined in 1996 and sang on the Van Halen III album, is leaving the band. All parties claim the split is amicable. The group later coaxes Sammy Hagar back into the fold, and reunites with original frontman David Lee Roth in 2007.
1988 The Beach Boys, who haven't had a #1 hit since "Good Vibrations" in 1966, top the charts with the Brian Wilson-less "Kokomo," used in the movie Cocktail. It's the longest gap between #1 hits for any artist.More
1988 Edie Brickell & New Bohemians are the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. Brickell meets Paul Simon on the broadcast, who she marries in 1992.
1971 After Elvis Presley's set at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, announcer Al Dvorin tells the crowd, "Elvis has left the building." The phrase soon enters the cultural lexicon, used to signal that an event is truly over.
1959 Bryan Adams is born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
5 NOVEMBER
In Music History
2022 Thanks to huge streaming numbers, Taylor Swift claims every spot on the Top 10 of the Hot 100 with songs from her album Midnights, with "Anti-Hero" at #1. She's the first artist to do so; Drake held nine of the Top 10 for a week in September 2021.
2021 ABBA release Voyage, their first album in 40 years, and also their last. They decided to make it while preparing for their show Voyage, which features digital avatars ("Abba-tars") of the band members. The album goes to #1 in most European countries and also Australia.
2017 Robert Knight, who had a hit with "Everlasting Love," dies at 72.
2014 It's a big day in Las Vegas, as Kiss begin their first residency with a show at the Hard Rock, while Britney Spears is honored with a key to the strip in celebration of her successful concert production at Planet Hollywood, which began in December 2013.
2012 The building at 1325 Commmonwealth Avenue in Boston, where the five members of Aerosmith shared an apartment in the '70s, is declared a historic landmark. To celebrate, the band play a free concert outside the building to thousands of fans.
2007 Garth Brooks plays the first of nine sold-out shows at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri, which opened a month earlier. When baseball season begins in 2008, the Kansas City Royals begin a tradition of playing "Friends In Low Places" during the sixth inning of every home game.
2005 Beach Boys singer Mike Love sues the group's mastermind Brian Wilson, whom Love claims is "shamelessly misappropriating Mike Love's songs, likeness and the Beach Boys trademark" in promotion for his album SMiLE. The lawsuit is later dismissed.
2005 Link Wray (of Link Wray & His Ray Men) dies of heart failure at age 76 at his home in Copenhagen, Denmark.
2003 Jimmy Buffett wins his first Country Music Association Award when "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere," a duet with Alan Jackson, is named Vocal Event of the Year.
2003 Bobby Hatfield (of The Righteous Brothers) dies of a cocaine-induced heart attack at age 63.
2002 Billy Guy (original baritone singer of The Coasters) dies of heart disease at age 66.
2000 U2 score their eighth UK #1 album when All That You Can't Leave Behind tops the chart, keeping Blur off the top.
2000 The Who guest star on the "A Tale of Two Springfields" episode of The Simpsons.
2000 Jimmie Davis, a country singer-songwriter who also served as governor of Louisiana from 1960-1964, dies at age 101 of a possible stroke. In 1945, he had a #1 hit on the country chart with "There's A New Moon Over My Shoulder."
1999 Mariah Carey makes her acting debut, playing a temperamental opera singer in the romantic comedy The Bachelor, starring Chris O'Donnell and Renée Zellweger.
Ten Killed At Astroworld Festival
2021Ten fans are killed and hundreds injured during Travis Scott's performance at his Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas, when the crowd of 50,000 surges toward the stage, crushing the victims.
Scott's concerts are known for their extreme energy, with the rapper encouraging fans to "rage," meaning to celebrate and go crazy. Like the mosh pits at metal shows, it can get dangerous near the stage when the music kicks in. Scott started Astroworld, held at NRG Park in his hometown of Houston, in 2018, the year he released his debut album. The first festivals were one-day events, but by 2021 Scott was so popular, it expanded to two days and sold out both dates. The tragedy takes place on the first day of the festival (the second is cancelled). The gates open at 1 p.m., and by the time Scott takes the stage at 9, the crowd is packed tight. Just a few songs in, many in the crowd start fighting for their lives, but with nowhere to move, there's little they can do. Most in the audience don't know that conditions have turned deadly, and Scott doesn't either. At 9:30, an ambulance enters and Scott stops the show, but he starts back up, finishing his set with a guest appearance by Drake, who also seems unaware of the problem. According to Houston police, they let the show go on for fear that stopping it would make matters worse. The 10 victims range in age from 9 to 27, with the youngest a boy who watched the show from his father's shoulders. His dad passed out from the crush, and the boy was trampled. Official video from the performance doesn't clearly show the dire conditions that developed, but videos taken by fans reveal the pockets of chaos and show how hard it was to make it stop. Some fans climbed lighting rigs and did everything they could to get Scott to end it, but to no avail. It's the deadliest concert disaster since 1979, when 11 people were killed in a rush to enter a Who concert in Cincinnati. "I'm honestly just devastated," Scott says in the aftermath. "I could never imagine anything like this just happening."
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