September 27, 2025 Zach Bryan breaks the record for largest ticketed concert, drawing 112,408 fans to his show at Michigan Stadium (the "Big House") in Ann Arbor. It's the first concert in the 98-year history of the stadium, which is primarily used for University of Michigan football games.
September 7, 2025 Mariah Carey, long a fixture on MTV but never a VMA winner, finally gets her due with the Video Vanguard Award. Video Of The Year goes to Ariana Grande for Brighter Days Ahead, a 26-minute short film.
July 22, 2025 Seventeen days after his farewell concert with his band Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne dies at 76. After launching his successful solo career in the '80s, he became the centerpiece of the metal community with the Ozzfest tour, which ran 1996–2008 and a few years thereafter. Ozzy tried retirement a few times (first in 1992) but always got bored and returned to action.
July 16, 2025 Coldplay do a jumbotron segment at their concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts, that lands on a couple with a very guilty reaction. "Either they're having an affair or they're just really shy," frontman Chris Martin quips. That night the footage shows up on social media and goes viral. The couple are quickly identified as a tech company CEO and one of his employees, both married... to other people.
July 16, 2025 Lady Gaga kicks off her Mayhem Ball tour with a show in Las Vegas. The set resembles an opera house, and the show is infused with that dramatic energy as Gaga battles her alter-ego, the troublemaking "Mistress of Mayhem," throughout. Hailed as a creative triumph, every show on the tour sells out.
July 9, 2025 Jack White gets his first cell phone, a gift from his wife on his 50th birthday. "I thought if I could make it to 50 years old at least without ever having one that I could be proud of myself, and I am," he posts.
July 5, 2025 Black Sabbath reunite with their four original members for one last show at the Back To The Beginning concert in their hometown of Birmingham, England. It's also the last show for lead singer Ozzy Osbourne, who does a solo set from a chair, as he's suffering from Parkinson's disease. The celebration lasts 11 hours and includes performances from Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Guns N' Roses, Halestorm, Pantera and Alice In Chains.
June 20, 2025 The animated movie KPop Demon Hunters debuts on Netflix with a soundtrack loaded with K-pop songs made by the same people responsible for the likes of BTS and Blackpink. The songs amass billions of streams, and "Golden," sung by the demon hunters Huntr/x, goes to #1 in America.
June 11, 2025 Brian Wilson, the creative engine in The Beach Boys, dies at 82. After a run of hits with jaunty songs like "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "Surfin' U.S.A.," he stopped touring with the group to focus on studio work, resulting in masterworks like "Good Vibrations" and "God Only Knows."
June 9, 2025 Sly Stone dies from COPD at 82. With his group Sly & the Family Stone he brought lively funk grooves to the charts with songs like "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" and "I Want To Take You Higher." The band fell apart in the mid-'70s when he battled drug addiction, and Stone remained reclusive and erratic the rest of his life, sabotaging various comeback opportunities.
June 7, 2025 Alex Warren, previously known as a social media influencer, goes to #1 in the US with "Ordinary," a song written for his wife soon after their wedding. It tops the charts in several other countries as well to become one of the biggest hits of 2025.
June 5, 2025 The Velvet Sundown release their debut album, Floating On Echoes. Their songs quickly populate algorithm-driven playlists and amass millions of streams, even though nobody has heard of the band or any of its members. They're later revealed to be an AI-generated act, the first to garner big streaming numbers.More
May 30, 2025 Taylor Swift buys the master recordings to her first six albums from the private equity firm that bought them in 2020. Swift's former label, along with her masters, was sold to her nemesis Scooter Braun in 2019, grinding her gears so badly that she started re-recording those albums, releasing four "Taylor's Versions" that all went to #1 and far outstreamed the originals.
May 30, 2025 Miley Cyrus releases her ninth studio album, Something Beautiful, featuring the singles "End Of The World" and "Easy Lover." The singer describes the accompanying musical film of the same name as being in the same vein of Pink Floyd's 1982 surrealist film The Wall "but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous and filled with pop culture."
May 19, 2025 "Pretty Little Baby," an obscure 1962 B-side by Connie Francis, goes to #1 on TikTok's Viral 50 and Top 50 charts after millions of creators use it in videos, including celebs like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner. When told by her publicist that she has a viral hit, the 87-year-old Francis replies, "What's that?"
May 8, 2025 Zach Bryan buys the church in Lowell, Massachusetts where his literary hero, Jack Kerouac, was an altar boy. He works with the Kerouac estate to turn it into a museum and events center based on Kerouac's life and work.
May 3, 2025 Lady Gaga plays a free concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro to an estimated 2.1 million people. Enormous free concerts are a thing on this particular beach: Madonna drew 1.6 million in 2024, and 3.5 million came to see Rod Stewart in 1994. Most of the funding for these shows comes from the city, which uses them to draw tourists during low season.
April 21, 2025 The video for Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" becomes her first to tally a billion views on YouTube, far outpacing "Hung Up," in second place with 531 million. The song is huge with Gen Z thanks to a series of TikTok trends.
April 18, 2025 Sinners opens in theaters, with 88-year-old Buddy Guy playing a character he inspired: a musician who somewhat literally goes through hell to become a blues legend and open his own club in Chicago. The film picks up a bunch of awards, including an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
April 14, 2025 Katy Perry does some space tourism, joining five other women (including journalist Gayle King) on a 10-minute suborbital flight aboard a Blue Origin rocket. "Space is going to finally be glam," she says before liftoff. "We are going to put the 'ass' in astronaut."More
February 24, 2025 Roberta Flack dies at 88 after a battle with ALS. As a solo artist, her hits include "Killing Me Softly With His Song" and "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." She also did popular duets with Donny Hathaway ("The Closer I Get To You"), Peabo Bryson ("Tonight, I Celebrate My Love") and Maxi Priest ("Set The Night To Music").
February 14, 2025 Saturday Night Live celebrates their 50th season with a Radio City Music Hall concert stocked with some of their most memorable musical guests, including Cher, Eddie Vedder, Arcade Fire, Bonnie Raitt, Lady Gaga and Brandi Carlile. One memorable moment is Post Malone teaming with the living members of Nirvana to play "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
February 2, 2025 The Beatles win the Best Rock Performance Grammy for "Now And Then," the first Grammy-nominated song made with help from AI, which was used to create John Lennon's vocal. It's their fourth post-breakup Grammy, matching their total from when the band was active.
January 30, 2025 A parade of stars including Stevie Wonder, Olivia Rodrigo and Katy Perry perform at the FireAid benefit concerts in Los Angeles to raise money for victims of the California wildfires, which left 29 dead and destroyed thousands of homes. The concert is held at two venues and runs for six hours.More
January 20, 2025 President Donald Trump joins The Village People on stage when they headline the Liberty Ball, part of his inauguration festivities - their song "Y.M.C.A." was a staple at his rallies. Billy Ray Cyrus, Nelly and Jason Aldean also take the stage; other acts performing at inauguration events include Kid Rock, Rascal Flatts, Gavin DeGraw, Parker McCollum and Carrie Underwood, who sings "America the Beautiful" without a backing track at the swearing-in ceremony when there's a technical glitch.
December 25, 2024 Halftime of the Christmas Day NFL game between the Ravens and Texans is the "Beyoncé Bowl," a grand spectacle that rivals Super Bowl halftime shows. Queen Bey rides in on a horse and sings an abridged version of her Cowboy Carter album, with Post Malone and Shaboozey singing their parts, and her daughter Blue Ivy showing up for a "Texas Hold 'Em" hoedown.
December 8, 2024 Taylor Swift wraps up her Eras Tour with a show in Vancouver, closing out a record-shattering journey that redefines the landscape of live music over the course of 149 concerts on five continents.More
November 22, 2024 The film version of Wicked, starring Ariana Grande as Galinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, opens in theaters. It's a blockbuster, earning $112 million in America on opening weekend, more than any other Broadway musical adaptation. It's also by far the biggest opening weekend box office for a movie staring a pop singer, blowing past the $42 million opening of Lady Gaga's A Star Is Born.
November 20, 2024 Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, and Louis Tomlinson attend the funeral for their One Direction bandmate Liam Payne, who died a month earlier after falling from a balcony. Payne's death dashed hopes of a reunion for the group, which split up in 2016.
November 18, 2024 In Orlando, Florida, Pink wraps up her Summer Carnival tour, which earns about $694 million over 97 dates. That's more than Beyoncé hauled in on her Renaissance tour but about a third of what Taylor Swift made on her Eras tour.
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