7 JUNE
Featured Events
2024 Charli XCX releases her sixth album, Brat. It becomes a social media sensation, leading to "Brat Summer" as creators post dances and memes en masse. The movement transforms the word "brat," which is redefined to mean carefree, honest, and unapologetic.
2009 After performing the Poison hit "Nothin' but a Good Time" at the Tony Awards, Bret Michaels has a run-in with the set, and the set wins. He cuts his lip and fractures his nose in the incident.More
2004 AC/DC's Back in Black album goes Double Diamond, becoming just the sixth album with RIAA-certified sales of over 20 million in America. In November, the Shania Twain album Come On Over becomes the seventh. Both albums were produced by Mutt Lange.
1982 Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion opens to the public. Visitors get to experience the Jungle Room (green shag carpets!), the Trophy Room, and the Meditation Garden.
1977 The Sex Pistols make a mockery of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee by playing punk rock from a boat on the Thames River, including their subversive hit, "Anarchy in the U.K."
1976 New York magazine runs a cover story called "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," describing the disco-fueled nightclub scene. The article gives Bee Gees manager Robert Stigwood the idea for Saturday Night Fever.More
1975 Elton John's Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy, with the hit "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," becomes the first album to debut at #1 in the US. It holds the top spot for seven (non-consecutive) weeks.
1972 The musical Grease opens on Broadway.More
1958 Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson) is born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, named after his father's jazz combo, the Prince Rogers Trio. By the time he's 15, he can play at least 10 different instruments. Before his death in 2016, he releases over 400 songs, most of which he wrote and produced. Many more emerge from his vault posthumously.
1917 Dean Martin is born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio. After teaming with Jerry Lewis in the popular comedy act Martin & Lewis, he becomes a top entertainer of the 1950s and 1960s, known for hits like "Memories Are Made Of This" and "That's Amore."
7 JUNE
In Music History
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.
2023 Pink kicks off her Summer Carnival tour in Bolton, England. It runs well past the summer, going into November 2024. Pink opens and closes each show with an aerial routine, singing high above the crowd while doing flips. Let's see Taylor Swift to that!
2014 Powered by a Clueless-themed video, "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX hits #1 in America, where it stays for seven weeks. Many are surprised to learn that Azalea, who raps like she's from the Dirty South, is from Australia.
2012 Bob Welch, Fleetwood Mac's guitarist from 1971–1974, dies of suicide at age 66.More
2011 Def Leppard release their first ever live album: Mirrorball.
2008 Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones make a surprise appearance to jam with Foo Fighters during their Wembley Stadium gig in London. The one-night-only supergroup plays "Rock And Roll" and "Ramble On."
2007 Rancho Mirage, California, names a street after one-time resident Dean Martin.
2006 Nelly Furtado releases her third album, Loose. A Timbaland production, it includes two #1 hits: "Promiscuous" and "Say It Right."
2003 The rain-soaked Field Day Festival takes place at Giants Stadium, with performances by Radiohead, Beastie Boys, Blur, Bright Eyes and several other acts. It was scheduled as a two-day event at a different site but hastily moved when permits didn't come through. Beck is supposed to perform but injures his ribs in a collision with a stagehand and is taken to the hospital. The festival does plant the seeds of Monsters Of Folk, as Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and Jim James of My Morning Jacket meet backstage and later form the group with M. Ward.
1994 Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane/Starship is sentenced to 200 hours of community service on charges of pointing a loaded gun at police who responded to reports of a disturbance at her home on March 5th.
1994 Stone Temple Pilots release their second album, Purple, which goes to #1 in America and sells over 6 million copies on the strength of the tracks "Big Empty," "Vasoline" and "Interstate Love Song."
1993 Ground is broken for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.
1991 Spike Lee's film Jungle Fever debuts in theaters. It boasts a soundtrack written and produced by Stevie Wonder and features Queen Latifah's acting debut. The rapper plays a waitress who snubs the interracial couple played by Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra.
1990 Rapper Iggy Azalea is born Amethyst Kelly in Sydney, Australia. She studies American rappers like Tupac Shakur and Missy Elliott to develop a kind of Southern drawl she uses on "Fancy," a #1 hit in 2014.
1985 The movie Perfect debuts in theaters, starring John Travolta as a Rolling Stone reporter who falls for aerobics instructor Jamie Lee Curtis. While the drama is a dud with critics, it portrays Rolling Stone as more than a music magazine – which is exactly what its editor-in-chief Jann Wenner hoped. More
Prince Changes Name To Unpronounceable Symbol
1993On his 35th birthday, Prince changes his name to an unpronounceable symbol, making him, literally, an icon.
Prince signed his first record contract at age 18 in 1977 when he made a deal with Warner Bros. Records that gave him lots of creative freedom and ensured that he would produce his own material. The arrangement worked out well for both sides, with Warners funding his experimental whims and making loads of money in the process. In 1992, Prince extended the contract in a deal that paid him $10 million for every album selling over 5 million copies, as his previous effort, Diamonds & Pearls, did. But while his label was looking for focused attention on every album in an effort to maximize revenue, Prince wanted to empty the vault, releasing lots of material. When Warners rejected this strategy, Prince made his beef very public, appearing with the word "Slave" scrawled across his face. Since the label owned the "Prince" output, he decided to change his name to something they couldn't control. Prince announces the name change in a statement that reads, "It is an unpronounceable symbol whose meaning has not been identified. It's all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new free-quency." Since the symbol cannot be rendered on a keyboard, Warner Bros. sends out floppy discs to media outlets with the digital image. Some publications use it, but most refer to him as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince." Some fans fudge it like this: O(+> As for the symbol, it started out as a mashup of the male and female signs (♂ ♀), first appearing within the first "9" on the 1999 album cover (1982), then on his motorcycle in his 1984 movie Purple Rain. It showed up again on the Graffiti Bridge album cover in 1990. This symbol could not be copyrighted, so Prince hired a Minneapolis design studio, HDMG, to tweak the glyph, adding a horn-like figure across it, giving it a unique identifier. He copyrighted this version and used it as the title of his 1992 album, then as his name (although legally, he is still Prince Rogers Nelson). In 1999, he talks about the name change in an interview with Larry King: "I had to search deep within my heart and spirit, and I wanted to make a change and move to a new plateau in my life. And one of the ways in which I did that was to change my name. It sort of divorced me from the past and all the hangups that go along with it. We had some issues that were basically about ownership of the music and how often I was supposed to record and things like that. We got along otherwise." In 2000, he goes back to "Prince" when his contract with Warner Bros. expires. (Here's a look at how the symbol itself evolved.)
Categories
©2026 Songfacts®, LLC
Comments
send your comment