12 SEPTEMBER
In Music History
2005 The Pussycat Dolls, which started 10 years earlier as a burlesque dance troupe, release their debut album, PCD. "The whole Pussycat Doll thing is a movement," lead singer Nicole Scherzinger says. "A whole concept and a thing unto itself."More
2000 Barenaked Ladies release their fifth studio album, Maroon.
2000 LL Cool J popularizes the phrase "GOAT," meaning the Greatest Of All Time, with the release of his eighth album, G.O.A.T., where he claims that title. The album lives up to its billing, going to #1.
2000 Lynyrd Skynyrd release Christmas Time Again, their first Christmas album.
1998 Green Day frontman Billie Armstrong's second child with wife Adrienne is born: son Jakob Danger.
1995 Lenny Kravitz releases his fourth studio album, Circus. The lead single, "Rock and Roll Is Dead," is nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
1993 Kelsea Ballerini is born in Mascot, Tennessee.
1993 Garbage find their lead singer when they see Shirley Manson in the video for "Suffocate Me" by her band Angelfish on MTV's alternative music showcase 120 Minutes. In a leap of faith, she moves from Scotland to Wisconsin to join Garbage, pairing her visceral lyrics and understated delivery with the band's progressive musical textures.
1989 Aerosmith continue their comeback with the album Pump, which contains both the raucous "Love In An Elevator" and the weighty "Janie's Got A Gun."
1987 The syndicated TV series Showtime at the Apollo makes its debut. During its 1093-episode run, hosts include Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Lawrence, Sinbad, Steve Harvey, and Mo'Nique.
1985 Rolling Stone publishes their interview with Prince, who has not spoken to the press in three years. He remains elusive, but explains why he made up stories in his early years to appease and confound reporters: "I used to tease a lot of journalists early on, because I wanted them to concentrate on the music."More
1979 The ABC news program 20/20 runs the special "The Elvis Cover-Up," which alleges that Elvis Presley's death was linked to prescription drugs. When his doctor, George Nichopoulous, is brought to trial, evidence shows that Elvis had prescriptions for about 10,000 doses of drugs just in the year he died (1977).
1978 Ruben Studdard is born in Frankfurt, Germany, where his father is stationed with the US Army, but grows up in Birmingham, Alabama. He goes on to win Season 2 of American Idol.
1977 B.T. Express perform for US President Jimmy Carter at the White House.
1977 Paul McCartney's son, James, is born.
The Monkees TV Show Debuts
1966The Monkees TV show makes its debut, with four actors chosen to portray a pop band based on The Beatles. While The Monkees are a fictional band, they become very real and eventually play on their own recordings instead of studio musicians.
Read more12 SEPTEMBER
Featured Events
2007 Led Zeppelin announce a reunion concert, with 18,000 tickets priced at $255 each doled out in an online lottery. At least a million registrations come in for the show, which is scheduled for November 26 but postponed to December 10 when Jimmy Page breaks his finger.
2006 Britney Spears gives birth to her second child, Jayden James Federline, born just 363 days after her first son, Sean. In ensuing years, the kids enjoy many lavish joint birthday parties.
2006 Justin Timberlake releases his second solo album, FutureSex: LoveSounds. Impelled by the lead single "SexyBack," it goes to #1 in the US and sells over 9 million copies.
2003 Johnny Cash dies of complications from diabetes in Nashville, Tennessee, at age 71. One of the biggest stars of the '60s and '70s, he made some of his most memorable music near the end of his life with a set of back-to-basics albums produced by Rick Rubin, including American IV: The Man Comes Around, which wins the CMA for Album Of The Year posthumously.
1998 Lauryn Hill's solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill debuts at #1 in the US. It sells over 10 million copies and wins pretty much every award it's eligible for, including the Grammy for Album Of The Year, but it's the only solo album Hill ever puts out.
1957 Hans Zimmer is born in Frankfurt, Germany. Known for his innovative style of combining electronic and traditional instrumentation, he becomes one of the most sought-after film composers in Hollywood. He lands his breakthrough gig with the 1988 movie Rain Man, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, and writes the music on a Fairlight digital synthesizer. He goes on to score hit movies like Gladiator (2000), The Dark Knight (2008), The Lion King (1994), and Dune (2021), with the latter two earning him his first Academy Award wins for Best Original Score.More
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