23 OCTOBER
Featured Events
2006 My Chemical Romance release their wildly popular third album, The Black Parade, which was recorded during the band's stay at the notoriously haunted Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles.More
2002 Kanye West, recently signed to Roc-a-Fella Records, falls asleep at the wheel and crashes his car into an oncoming vehicle. His jaw is shattered, inspiring his song "Through The Wire," which he records with his jaw wired shut. The song appears on his debut album, The College Dropout, in 2004.
1976 Led Zeppelin, who avoid TV appearances because of sound problems, appear on American television for the first time when footage of them performing "Black Dog" and "Dazed and Confused" from their concert film The Song Remains The Same airs on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert.
1961 Dion's "Runaround Sue" hits #1 for the first of two weeks. Dion pulled the name Sue out of thin air, but when he later marries a woman named Sue, she tells everyone the song is about her - even though she knows it isn't.
1959 "Weird Al" Yankovic is born Alfred Matthew Yankovic in Downey, California, and raised in Lynwood.
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1940 Ellie Greenwich is born Eleanor Louise Greenwich in Brooklyn, New York. One of the most successful songwriters of the '60, her co-writes include "Leader of the Pack" and "Be My Baby."
23 OCTOBER
In Music History
2020 Country music star Jerry Jeff Walker dies from throat cancer at 78. He leaves behind a proud artistic legacy headed by his oft-covered song "Mr. Bojangles."
2019 Coldplay reveal the tracklist for their upcoming album Everyday Life with a small classified ad on page 31 of the North Wales Daily Post.
2016 Dead Or Alive lead singer Pete Burns dies of a heart attack at age 57. Known for the 1985 hit "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)," Burns estimated that he had 300 plastic surgeries in his lifetime.
2015 Following the release of her acclaimed Greatest Hits: Decade #1 album, Carrie Underwood issues her fifth studio album, Storyteller. A chart-topping hit, it makes her the first artist in history to have six consecutive #1 albums on the Country chart.
2014 Jeanne Black, known for the 1960 hit "He'll Have To Stay," dies two days before her 77th birthday.
2014 English rocker Alvin Stardust dies at age 72 after a battle with prostate cancer.
2010 Celine Dion gives birth to twin boys Eddy (named after Eddy Marnay, who produced her early albums) and Nelson (named for Nelson Mandela). Like she did after her first child was born in 2001, Dion takes a Las Vegas residency so she won't have to tour and can spend more time raising her kids.
2010 Katy Perry and Russell Brand get married in Rajasthan, India.More
2010 Buffalo Springfield reunite after a 43-year stage absence for Neil Young's annual Bridge School benefit concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California. Other acts on the roster include Jackson Browne, Elton John, Lucinda Williams, Kris Kristofferson (subbing for an ailing Merle Haggard), and Bridge veterans Pearl Jam.
2007 Exodus release their eighth studio album, The Atrocity Exhibition...Exhibit A.
2007 Carrie Underwood releases her second studio album, Carnival Ride, which debuts at #1 in the US. The single "Last Name" earns her a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
2007 Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's Raising Sand debuts at #2 in America. Plant, 59, turned down a Led Zeppelin reunion tour to focus on the project.
2005 Rapper Cam'ron is shot during an early morning carjacking attempt in Washington, D.C. Two men pull alongside Cam'ron's 2006 Lamborghini and open fire while the artist is stopped at a traffic light at New York and New Jersey avenues. He is hit by one bullet, which travels through one of his arms and into the other. He drives himself to Howard University Hospital for treatment.
2003 Mexican rap-rock band Molotov tops the second annual MTV Video Music Awards Latin America with four wins, including Video of the Year and Best Group.
2002 Lyricist Adolph Green dies in New York City age 87.
Ashlee Simpson Caught Lip-Synching on SNL
2004Ashlee Simpson gets caught lip-synching on Saturday Night Live when her pre-recorded vocals come on but her mouth isn't moving. She does a little dance, then walks off stage as they go to commercial. Her career takes a tumble as she's ridiculed for not actually singing on the show.
Simpson was having problems with her voice, but instead of begging off the musical guest spot, she convinced producers to let her lip-synch, which was a gray area on the show - it was typically only allowed if the singer was dancing. Simpson had a role on the TV series 7th Heaven staring in 2002, and in 2004 got her own reality show on MTV (The Ashlee Simpson Show) that followed along as she made her debut album, Autobiography. When the album was released in July 2004, it shot straight to #1, making her a star on the order of her sister, Jessica Simpson. The lead single was "Pieces Of Me," which rose to #5 in September. That's the song she lip-synched without incident earlier in the show, but for her second performance, something goes wrong and that same song plays instead of the one she's supposed to sing, "Autobiography." Simpson immediately recognizes it's the wrong song and holds the microphone down by her side as she looks befuddled, as does her band. When her pre-recorded vocals come on, it's clear to viewers that she planned to lip-synch the performance. In the goodbye segment, she lays some blame: "My band started playing the wrong song and I didn't know what to do so I thought I'd do a hoedown." The incident gets a lot of heat and provides plenty of fodder for comedians (including on SNL, where they poke fun of it the following week). Simpson put a lot of work into her move to music, and she co-wrote all the song on her album, but the SNL mishap trashes all the credibility she built up. Her next singles underperform and she never fully recovers. After a tour in 2008 she leaves the industry to focus on raising a family. "I had a super-high and then I had a super-low at SNL," she says in 2025 when she launches a Vegas residency. "For me, it was such a lesson: You hate me so much because I lost my voice? It was such a dehumanizing feeling that I had to remember who I was and why I was doing this. People's perception of you is not who you are."
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