April 3, 2007 During a Season 6 episode of American Idol, Ryan Seacrest announces the American Idol Songwriter Competition. The entry fee is $10, and the winning song gets to be the winner's first single. After judges cull the 25,000 entries to 20 finalists, it's put to an online vote and the winner is "This is My Now."More
January 9, 2007 John Mayer joins Steve Jobs onstage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco to introduce Apple's latest invention: the iPhone.More
December 25, 2006 Alongside stars like Beyoncé, Eddie Murphy, and Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson makes her acting debut in the movie Dreamgirls, based on the Supremes-inspired Broadway musical.More
November 11, 2006 The soundtrack to the Disney series Hannah Montana goes to #1, and six of its songs make the Hot 100. Hannah is played by 13-year-old Miley Cyrus, who sings all the songs on the album.More
October 23, 2006 My Chemical Romance release their wildly popular third album, The Black Parade, which was recorded during the band's stay at the notoriously haunted Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles.More
September 30, 2006 Farm Aid co-founders Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young are joined by Dave Matthews (The Dave Matthews Band), Steel Pulse, Gov't Mule, Jerry Lee Lewis, Steve Earle and Allison Moorer for the organization's 21st anniversary concert at the Tweeter Center in Camden, New Jersey.
August 26, 2006 Taylor Hicks' "Do I Make You Proud?" drops out of the Hot 100 after just eight weeks, establishing a new record for the shortest stay on the chart for a #1 hit. A little perspective: "London Bridge" by Fergie is the 2006 #1 with the next-fewest weeks on the chart, with 21.
July 1, 2006 During the brief time when American Idol Season 5 winner Taylor Hicks is the most popular Taylor in music, his first single, "Do I Make You Proud?," hits #1 in America.More
June 27, 2006 Eileen Barton, known for her 1950 hit "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked A Cake," dies of ovarian cancer at age 81.
June 20, 2006 Billy Preston's funeral is held at the Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California. Among the mourners are Little Richard, Andrae Crouch, Della Reese, The Temptations' Ali-Ollie Woodson and Joe Cocker, who sings his Preston-penned hit "You Are So Beautiful."More
June 2, 2006 Jackson Browne, Dar Williams and Pete Seeger play a hayloft in Garrison, New York, to kickstart Orleans founder John Hall's congressional campaign.More
April 17, 2006 A big-budget Coke commercial with a new song by Jack White called "Love Is The Truth" hits YouTube, then quickly goes away.More
April 15, 2006 "Be Without You" by Mary J. Blige remains at #1 on the R&B chart for its 15th week, breaking the record of 14 weeks set the previous year by Mariah Carey with "We Belong Together."
March 13, 2006 Isaac Hayes quits the TV series South Park after an episode airs mocking his religion, Scientology.More
March 11, 2006 "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt goes to #1 in America. Blunt later explains that the song is "about a guy who's high as a f--king kite on drugs in the subway stalking someone else's girlfriend."
December 18, 2005 After airing on Saturday Night Live, the Digital Short "Lazy Sunday," about two gangsta wannabes who plan a trip to see The Chronicles of Narnia movie, appears on YouTube. It quickly goes viral, becoming the first TV segment to do so on YouTube, which launched 10 months earlier.More
November 25, 2005 After a nine-year hiatus, Take That announce they're getting back together and going on tour without Robbie Williams.More
October 29, 2005 The wax figures of the younger Beatles used in the cover of the band's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album are auctioned off for 81,500 pounds in London after being discovered languishing in the backroom of Madame Tussauds' famous wax museum.
January 1, 2005 Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Want To Be," the theme song to the popular teen drama One Tree Hill, peaks at #10 on the Hot 100 in the midst of the show's second season.More
October 30, 2004 Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker marries Playboy model Shanna Moakler in a Nightmare Before Christmas-inspired ceremony with his bandmates serving as his groomsmen. The couple's romantic connection to the classic Tim Burton film gets a nod in the blink single "I Miss You."More
October 3, 2004 Teenage English soul star Joss Stone becomes the youngest female solo artist to top the British albums survey as Mind Body & Soul debuts at #1. The 17-year-old's second release, and first full-length album, bows ahead of Top 10 entries by Marilyn Manson, Tom Jones and Brian Wilson. Billie Eilish sets a new mark in 2019 when she hits #1 with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? two months younger than when Stone took the top spot.
June 26, 2004 Defying predictions of musical and personal implosion, Velvet Revolver, fronted by Scott Weiland and with three ex-Guns N' Roses members in the lineup, debut at #1 in America with their first album, Contraband.More
June 8, 2004 Bolstered by the hit singles "Helena" and "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)," My Chemical Romance goes mainstream with their second album, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge.More
February 1, 2004 Justin Timberlake punctuates the Super Bowl halftime show by tearing away part of Janet Jackson's costume, revealing her right breast to a massive audience that quickly reaches for their TiVos for a replay. Both artists blame it on a "wardrobe malfunction," but while Jackson gets blacklisted, Timberlake is welcomed back by the music industry and the NFL after a series of apologies.More
January 21, 2004 The warts-and-all Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster makes its debut at the Sundance Film Festival.More
November 18, 2003 Blink-182, the pop-punk purveyors of gross puns with album titles like Enema Of The State and Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, prove they're all grown up when they choose to leave their fifth album, an experimental art project, untitled.More
October 22, 2003 In the middle of their first world tour and flush with fame from their debut album, Evanescence founder Ben Moody abruptly quits the band.More
September 22, 2003 Auditioning for the third season of American Idol, William Hung performs a lively, but stupefyingly bad rendition of the Ricky Martin hit "She Bangs."More
June 28, 2003 After Ruben Studdard beats Clay Aiken to win Season 2 of American Idol, their first singles debut at the top of the Hot 100. Aiken takes the top spot, becoming the first new artist to go straight to #1 on the chart.More
April 28, 2003 Apple launches the iTunes store, the first widely successful legal music download app, thanks to the emergence of the iPod, which lets people take their music with them. At first, the service is available only to Mac users, with the music files encoded in Apple's proprietary format (AAC) restricting where they can be played.More
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