8 MARCH
In Music History
1988 Producer Benny Blanco is born Benjamin Levin in Reston, Virginia. He works on some of the biggest hits for Kesha ("TiK ToK"), Maroon 5 ("Moves Like Jagger"), and Selena Gomez ("Same Old Love"), whom he marries in 2025.
1987 The day before releasing The Joshua Tree, U2 debut two songs from the album - "Exit" and "In God's Country" - on the BBC show The Old Grey Whistle Test. Also on the show is a young Irish singer named Sinead O'Connor with her first live TV performance.
1983 English composer William Walton dies at age 80.
1979 Tom Chaplin (lead singer of Keane) is born in Hastings, East Sussex, England.
1979 Rolling Stone reports that inflation has ballooned the cost of making and promoting a major label LP to between $350,000 and $500,000.
1978 Kameelah Williams (lead singer of the R&B trio 702) is born in Las Vegas, Nevada.
1976 Gaz Coombes (lead vocalist, guitarist of Supergrass) is born in Oxford, England.
1975 "Lady" by Styx, written and sung by the band's keyboardist, Dennis DeYoung, as a tribute to his wife, Suzanne, rises to #6, the group's first Top 10 single in America. The song was first released in 1973 but didn't get much attention until a DJ on WLS in Chicago started playing it a year later.
1975 Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow" hits #1 in the US.
1974 John Denver records "Annie's Song" and "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" at RCA's Music Center of the World studios in Los Angeles.
1974 Queen II (fittingly, their second album) is released in the UK, followed a month later with a US release. None of the tracks chart in America, but "Seven Seas of Rhye" lands at #10 in the UK.
1974 Rising from the ashes of Free and Mott the Hoople, the newly formed Bad Company play their first live gig, at Newcastle City Hall in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.
1973 Paul McCartney is fined 100 pounds for growing cannabis on his farm in Campbeltown, Scotland.
1971 Radio Hanoi, which is a propaganda radio station set up by the North Vietnamese army to broadcast to American troops serving in Vietnam, goes on the air with a recording of Jimi Hendrix' version of The Star-Spangled Banner.
1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary" hits #2 on the Hot 100, where it stays for three weeks. It's the first of five CCR singles to reach the runner-up spot on the chart without ever hitting #1.
Superunknown And The Downward Spiral Released The Same Day
1994Two seminal albums from the '90s are released: Soundgarden's Superunknown and Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. They enter the albums chart at #1 and #2, respectively.
Read more8 MARCH
Featured Events
2003 50 Cent's first single, "In Da Club," tops the Hot 100 for the first of nine weeks. The bumpin' beat comes from 50's producer, Dr. Dre, who is also his label boss.
1973 Grateful Dead keyboard player Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, a founding member of the band, dies at age 27.More
1970 Diana Ross performs for the first time as a solo artist, starting an 11-night engagement at the Monticello in Framingham, Massachusetts, where she hones her act for her Las Vegas debut in May. She left The Supremes two months earlier.
1969 The Small Faces break up when lead singer Steve Marriott leaves the band. Marriott forms Humble Pie, and the remaining members rechristen themselves The Faces after adding new lead singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Ron Wood.
1969 "Happy Birthday" becomes the first song to be performed in outer space when the astronauts on Apollo IX sing it to celebrate the birthday of the director of NASA space operations, Christopher Kraft.
1963 The Four Tops get a $400 advance to sign with Motown. They spend the rest of the year singing backup for other acts, including The Supremes.
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