Pick a Day

24 SEPTEMBER

In Music History

2023 Taylor Swift takes in the Chiefs/Bears game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City as a guest of Chiefs star Travis Kelce, a potential love interest. Ratings spike among teenage girls, and Kelce jerseys register a surge in sales.

2019 Opera star Plácido Domingo, scheduled to star the next day in Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, backs out amid allegations of sexual misconduct that surfaced weeks earlier. This ends Domingo's association with The Met, where he had performed for the last 51 consecutive years.

2014 George Hilliard (of the Philadelphia soul group The Tymes) dies at age 73.

2009 Leonard Cohen performs a controversial concert at Ramat Gan Stadium in Tel Aviv, Israel. After announcing all proceeds from the concert will go to a charitable fund organized through Amnesty International, the group withdraws all involvement and Cohen is forced to make other arrangements. He dubs the performance "A Concert for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace" and creates a new charity of the same name, run by both Israelis and Palestinians, to distribute all profits to groups focused on coexistence in Israel.

2008 Zippo launches their iPhone app, allowing concertgoers to hold up a virtual flame during songs like "Free Bird." It's downloaded over 5 million times its first year.

2003 Gordon Lightfoot is inducted into the Canadian Songwriter Hall of Fame.

2002 Blues singer-songwriter Tim Rose ("Hey Joe," "Morning Dew,") dies of a heart attack during a stomach operation at age 62.

1999 Sting releases his sixth solo album, Brand New Day. Among the many collaborators is the Algerian singer Cheb Mami, who appears on "Desert Rose."

1999 Hank Williams is the subject of the first-ever country music symposium at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "A Tribute To Hank Williams" begins with Lucinda Williams, Kim Richey, Kathy Mattea, and Steve Earle performing the works of the late country music godfather.

1999 Britney Spears appears on the Sabrina, the Teenage Witch episode "No Place Like Home," where she dances with Sabrina.

1998 The film SLC Punk! premieres. Set in the unlikely location of Salt Lake City, Utah, the film documents the '80s punk movement in the western US through the eyes of a fan. The film becomes a favorite in punk culture for being one of the accurate, if stylized, portrayals of the genre. The soundtrack includes songs by the Ramones, Blondie, The Velvet Underground, Dead Kennedys, and Generation X.

1998 Former Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler, 33, is sentenced to 150 days in jail for beating two women he dated and for violating his probation from an earlier domestic violence conviction.

1997 One-hit-wonder Larry Hall, known for the 1959 hit "Sandy," dies of cancer at age 57.

1996 "That Thing You Do," the title track to That Thing You Do!, a musical film directed by and starring Tom Hanks, is released. The track is written by Adam Schlesinger, bass player for Fountains of Wayne, and performed by fictional band The Wonders. The song goes on to peak at #41 in America and is nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes. It loses out on both occasions to Madonna's "You Must Love Me," from Evita.

1996 Weezer release their second album, the self-produced Pinkerton.