24 MARCH
Featured Events
2008 Britney Spears makes the first of two appearances on How I Met Your Mother, playing a receptionist smitten with Josh Radnor's character, Ted.
2000 Jack and Meg White of The White Stripes get divorced three months before releasing their second album, De Stijl. Despite the split, their musical partnership continues until 2011.
1979 Disco is still going strong as the Bee Gees' "Tragedy" hits #1 in the US.
1973 A fan shouting "Leather!" jumps on stage and bites Lou Reed in the butt during a concert in Buffalo. The fan is ejected and Reed is left with a sore posterior.
1972 The Godfather opens in theaters. Musically significant because the character Johnny Fontane is supposedly based on Frank Sinatra, and because "Godfather of..." becomes a common musical honorific.More
1958 Elvis Presley goes to the Memphis Draft Board and enters the United States Army.More
24 MARCH
In Music History
2026 Miley Cyrus revisits Hannah Montana for a Disney+ 20th anniversary special. Former cast members, along with stars like Selena Gomez and Chappell Roan, join Cyrus in sharing memories of the show, which ran from 2006 to 2011 and starred Cyrus as a schoolgirl who was secretly a rock star. Cyrus debuts a new song on the special called "Younger You," written in the form of a letter from her younger self.
2020 Producers Swizz Beatz and Timbaland face off in the first Verzuz battle, where songwriters, producers and artists take turns performing their hits and are judged by an online audience. The series quickly becomes very popular, regularly drawing virtual audiences in the six figures. Popular battles include Gladys Knight vs Patti LaBelle, Teddy Riley vs Babyface, and Erykah Badu vs Jill Scott.
2010 Rock photographer Jim Marshall dies at age 74.
2009 Prince launches Lotusflow3r.com, which for $77 subscriptions, offers access to his videos and music. It shuts down after a year.
2009 Motown drummer Uriel Jones dies at age 74.
2007 Country singer Henson Cargill, known for the 1968 hit "Skip A Rope," dies during surgery at age 66.
2005 After Carrie Underwood performs "Alone" on American Idol, Simon Cowell, by far the harshest critic on the panel, predicts she will win the competition and sell more records than any previous Idol winner. He's right: She becomes the first country singer to win and ends up surpassing Kelly Clarkson as the best-selling alum of the show.
2001 After being dubbed Worst Actress of the Century a year earlier, Madonna lands her fifth Razzie for Worst Actress, for her role as Abbie Reynolds in The Next Best Thing, at the 21st Golden Raspberry Awards.
2001 John Connolly of Sevendust marries Lori Kirkley.
2001 "Duane Allman Boulevard" is dedicated in Macon, Georgia, near where he died in a motorcycle crash.
2000 MTV debuts the reality series Making the Band, with the first season spawning the boy band O-Town. Lou Pearlman, the creator of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, manages the group.
1997 Philadelphia soul singer Harold Melvin (of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes) dies at age 57, months after suffering a debilitating stroke.
1992 A Tribe Called Quest release "Scenario," with a guest verse by little-known 19-year-old rapper Busta Rhymes.
1992 Arrested Development release their debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of... It sells four million copies thanks to the hits "Tennessee," "People Everyday" and "Mr. Wendal."
Hannah Montana Debuts on Disney
2006Hannah Montana, starring Miley Cyrus as a middle school student who is secretly a pop star, debuts on Disney Channel. Cyrus, 13 years old and best known as the daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, becomes a pop star in real life when the show becomes a huge hit and spawns a #1 soundtrack.
In the '90s, Disney minted the pop stars Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake on the series The All-New Mickey Mouse Club. Early in the '00s, Hilary Duff, star of Lizzie McGuire, and Raven-Symoné, star of That's So Raven, branched into music with songs released on Disney's record labels. Hannah Montana is different because she's a fictional character, but that character is a pop star. From the start, the songs Hannah sings are vital to the show, not because they progress the storylines, but because they're well-crafted pop songs with hit potential. This works because the songs are used in scenes where Hannah performs them in concert. The show exceeds expectations, drawing 5.4 million viewers to the first episode and maintaining very high ratings throughout its four seasons. Those viewers also buy music, and when the first Hannah Montana soundtrack drops in October, it goes straight to #1. In the second season (2007), Disney starts to separate Miley Cyrus' musical output from that of her character; the season 2 soundtrack is called Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus, and is credited to Miley, not Hannah. In 2008, Cyrus releases her album Breakout, her first not associated with Hannah Montana. By the time the last episode airs in 2011, Cyrus is well known outside of the Hannah Montana universe thanks to hits "The Climb" and "Party in the U.S.A." In 2013 she moves off of Disney's Hollywood Records and releases the album Bangerz on RCA. With the #1 hit "Wrecking Ball," it sheds the skin of Hannah Montana and establishes her as a major pop star.
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