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January 24, 1998 The Titanic soundtrack goes to #1 in America, replacing Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love. Both albums contain the hit song from the movie, "My Heart Will Go On."
December 19, 1997 Titanic opens in theaters. It becomes the top-grossing movie of all time, with a soundtrack that sells about 15 million copies, thanks mostly to the Celine Dion hit, "My Heart Will Go On."More
November 22, 1997 Michael Hutchence of INXS dies in a Sydney hotel room in what the coroner rules a suicide. The famous frontman was just 37.More
November 14, 1997 Five weeks before the movie Titanic is released, Celine Dion issues her album Let's Talk About Love, featuring the theme song, "My Heart Will Go On." As the movie commandeers the popular culture, Dion's album rides in its wake, going on to sell over 30 million copies worldwide.More
November 13, 1997 Ray Charles conducts his first-ever online chat at rhino.com, answering questions about his new five-CD boxed set, Genius & Soul: The 50th Anniversary Collection.
November 7, 1997 The Titanic soundtrack is released. It contains just one song with vocals - Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" - but sells well over 10 million copies and goes to #1 in most countries thanks to the runaway success of the film.More
September 27, 1997 Bob Dylan plays "Knocking On Heaven's Door" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" for Pope John Paul II and an audience of 300,000 at the World Eucharist Congress in Bologna, Italy. For the 77-year-old Pope, it's a chance to connect with young people, and the pontiff does so by invoking Dylan's song "Blowin' In The Wind" during his sermon. Dylan's invite is not without controversy, as the future Pope Benedict fears the "rock prophet" and his music are at odds with the Roman Catholic faith.More
September 4, 1997 Accepting the award for Best New Artist, 19-year-old Fiona Apple rages against the machine, saying: "This world is bulls--t. And you shouldn't model your life about what you think we think is cool, what we're wearing, and what we're saying."More
August 5, 1997 Yungblud is born Dominic Harrison in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England. His highly expressive songs about youth culture resonate with his Gen Z cohort, and he racks up a string of #1 albums in the UK, starting with Weird! in 2020.
July 12, 1997 The French magazine Le Figaro publishes an interview with George Harrison where he blasts modern music, taking aim at U2 and the Spice Girls.More
July 5, 1997 Organized by Sarah McLachlan, the all-female Lilith Fair tour kicks off with a show in The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington State. The lineup includes Jewel, Suzanne Vega and Paula Cole, with Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow and Fiona Apple joining on subsequent stops.More
June 28, 1997 Lela Howard (83) and her husband Raymond (88) drive to a festival 10 miles away in Temple, Texas, but don't return. Fastball frontman Tony Scalzo writes the song "The Way" after reading about it. Days after completing the song, the couple is found dead about 200 miles from the festival.
June 24, 1997 Hours after shipping 100,000 copies of the Insane Clown Posse album The Great Milenko, the group's label, Hollywood Records (a Disney subsidiary), recalls the shipments over concerns about the "inappropriate" lyrics.More
June 16, 1997 In the UK, The Verve release "Bitter Sweet Symphony," which lives up to it's title: the song is a huge hit, but Mick Jagger and Keith Richards end up getting credits and royalties.More
May 29, 1997 Jeff Buckley drowns while swimming in Wolf River in Tennessee. The singer/songwriter/guitarist known for his version of "Hallelujah" is 30 years old at the time of his death.More
May 23, 1997 Country singers LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood release separate versions of the Diane Warren-penned ballad "How Do I Live" on the same day.More
January 28, 1997 Pat Boone releases the album In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy, where he covers various hard rock classics, including "Stairway To Heaven," "Enter Sandman" and "Crazy Train."More
January 23, 1997 Tori Amos performs at a benefit concert for RAINN (The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) at Madison Square Garden in New York City. As a rape survivor, the cause is close to Tori's heart (she wrote her debut single, "Me And A Gun," about her rape experience).
October 5, 1996 Joan Osborne, Soul Asylum, Jewel, Extra Fancy, The Presidents of the United States of America, and Dog's Eye View, among others, perform at the first annual "Concert to Benefit The Pedro Zamora Foundation." The show raises money for the PZF to use toward educating kids about AIDS. Zamora, who died of an AIDS-related illness two years earlier, was a cast member on MTV's The Real World: San Francisco.
October 4, 1996 That Thing You Do!, a musical film starring its writer/director Tom Hanks, who plays the manager of fictional '60s band The Wonders, is released to US cinemas. The title track to the film was written by Adam Schlesinger, bass player for Fountains of Wayne.More
September 7, 1996 Rap star Tupac Shakur is shot five times in a drive-by following a boxing match in Las Vegas. He dies six days later at age 25.More
July 23, 1996 Fiona Apple, 18, releases her debut album, Tidal, featuring "Shadowboxer" and "Criminal." It sells over 3 million copies in America.More
July 16, 1996 The Sultan of Brunei, the world's richest man, marks his 50th birthday with a Michael Jackson concert on the Borneo Island. Jackson earns about $15 million for the performance, which is free to the 60,000 in attendance.
July 13, 1996 At Riverfront Park in Nashville, Chet Atkins, Steve Earle and the Goo Goo Dolls join about 1000 other guitarists to jam on "Heartbreak Hotel" for nearly 80 minutes. They come up short in their bid to break the record for largest jam session, set in 1994 when 1,320 guitarists played "Takin' Care Of Business" in Vancouver.
June 27, 1996 Fugees headline the "Hoodshock" festival in Harlem, which the group organized as a free event to encourage voter registration. The Notorious B.I.G., Sean "Puffy" Combs and Wu-Tang Clan also perform, but the event makes headlines for a panic set off at the end of the festival when a man fires gunshots into the air. In the chaos, about 30 people are injured.
June 15, 1996 The Beastie Boys host the first Tibetan Freedom Concert, with performers that include Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins and John Lee Hooker. About 100,000 attend the two shows, raising money for the Milarepa Fund.More
May 26, 1996 Firemen arrive at the burning home of Eric Clapton to find the guitarist running in and out of the home to save his guitar collection. The house is gutted, with about three million dollars in damage.
May 25, 1996 Sublime frontman Brad Nowell dies of a heroin overdose at age 28, just one week after marrying Troy Dendekker, the mother of his 11-month-old son, Jakob.More
April 1, 1996 After blowing through more than $30 million, MC Hammer files for bankruptcy protection.More
February 19, 1996 During Michael Jackson's performance of "Earth Song" at the 1996 BRIT Awards, Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp jumps on stage and makes demeaning gestures toward Jackson. Cocker says he did it because Jackson was "pretending to be Jesus."More
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