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1994 in music
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This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1994.
Specific locations
Specific genres
- 1994 in country music
- 1994 in heavy metal music
- 1994 in hip hop music
- 1994 in Latin music
- 1994 in jazz
Events
January–February
- January 19 – Bryan Adams becomes the first major Western music star to perform in Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.[1]
- January 21–February 5 – The Big Day Out festival takes place, again expanding from the previous year's venues to include the Gold Coast, Queensland and Auckland in New Zealand. The festival is headlined by Soundgarden, Ramones and Björk.[2]
- January 25 – Alice in Chains release their Jar of Flies album which makes its US chart debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, becoming the first ever EP to do so.
- January 29 – The Supremes' Mary Wilson is injured when her Jeep hits a freeway median and flips over just outside Los Angeles, USA. Wilson's 14-year-old son is killed in the accident.
- February 1 – Green Day release their breakthrough album Dookie, ushering in the mid-1990s punk revival.[3] Dookie eventually achieves diamond certification.
- February 7 – Blind Melon's lead singer Shannon Hoon is forced to leave the American Music Awards ceremony because of his loud and disruptive behavior. Hoon is later charged with battery, assault, resisting arrest, and destroying a police station phone.[4]
- February 11 – The three surviving members of The Beatles secretly reunite to begin recording additional music for a few of John Lennon's old unfinished demos, presented to Paul McCartney by Yoko Ono, with Jeff Lynne producing. The track, "Free As A Bird", is released as a single in late 1995 as part of the exhaustive Beatles Anthology project, reaching No. 2 in the UK and No. 6 in the United States.
- February 14 – Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia marries Deborah Koons.[5]
- February 23 – Eddie Van Halen, Chris Isaak, and B.B. King attend the ground breaking ceremony for the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino takes place in Paradise, Nevada, USA.
- February 26 – The Sanremo Music Festival ends with victory for Aleandro Baldi in the "Big Artists" category, for the song "Passerà"[6]
March–April
- March 1
- Selena becomes the first Tejano music singer to win a Grammy Award.[7]
- Nirvana play their final concert, in Munich.
- The 36th Annual Grammy Awards are presented in New York, hosted by Garry Shandling. The soundtrack from the 1992 film The Bodyguard wins Album of the Year, while its lead single, Whitney Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You", wins Record of the Year. The single version of "A Whole New World", performed by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle, wins Song of the Year. Toni Braxton wins Best New Artist.
- Frank Sinatra receives the Grammy Legend Award. Sinatra's acceptance speech is cut short. Other artists criticize the producer's decision during the show, and Billy Joel takes extra time to perform his song, The River of Dreams, noting that he is wasting valuable air time.
- March 3 – In Rome, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain lapses into a coma after overdosing on Rohypnol and champagne.
- March 5 – Grace Slick is arrested for pointing a shotgun at police in her Tiburon, California, home.[8]
- March 7 – The United States Supreme Court decision Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. rules that parody can qualify as fair use. The case was spurred by 2 Live Crew releasing a parody of the Roy Orbison hit "Oh, Pretty Woman" without a license from the publishing firm Acuff-Rose Music.
- March 8 – Nine Inch Nails release their second studio album The Downward Spiral. It would go on to sell over 3 million copies and be credited with helping bring industrial rock music into the mainstream.
- March 13 – Selena releases her final Spanish album Amor Prohibido. Its production had been delayed because of the launch of Selena's fashion clothing line and boutiques, and her "Selena Live!" tour in support of Live!.[9]
- March 18
- Courtney Love calls the police, fearing that her husband, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, is suicidal. Police confiscate four guns and 25 boxes of ammo from Cobain's home.
- Bassist Darryl Jones replaces Bill Wyman in The Rolling Stones.
- March 22 - Pantera releases Far Beyond Driven, which becomes the heaviest album to hit number 1 on the Billboard 200.
- March 30 – Pink Floyd embark on what would be their last world tour before their breakup. The record-breaking tour supports their Division Bell album, with the band playing to 5,500,000 people in 68 cities and grossing over £150,000,000 (US$186,952,500).
- March 31 – Madonna on Late Show with David Letterman: Madonna appears on the Late Show with David Letterman, making headlines with her profanity-laced interview.[10] Robin Williams later describes the segment as a "battle of wits with an unarmed woman."
- April 8 – The body of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, is found. Cobain's death, three days before, is legally declared to be suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot.
- April 11 – The Offspring release Smash, which goes on to become the best selling independent album of all time and one of the most influential albums of the 90s.
- April 25
- Blur releases Parklife, its first album reaching No. 1 in UK, where it was certified "quadruple platinum".[11]
- Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys is sentenced to 200 hours of community service for attacking a television cameraman during funeral services for actor River Phoenix in November 1993.
- April 26 – Grace Slick pleads guilty to having pointed a shotgun at police officers on March 5.
- April 27 – The legendary Fillmore club reopens in San Francisco with a concert headlined by The Smashing Pumpkins.
- April 30 – The 39th Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Dublin, Ireland, which becomes the first-ever country to win three consecutive contests. Its winners are Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan with "Rock 'N' Roll Kids", written by Brendan Graham. The interval features the first-ever public performance of Riverdance, featuring Michael Flatley and Jean Butler, which developed into the world-famous stage show.[12]
May–June
- May 2 – A Los Angeles jury finds Michael Bolton, along with co-writer Andy Goldmark and Sony Music Entertainment, guilty of copyright infringement over the song "Love Is a Wonderful Thing". The song is ruled to be too similar to a song of the same name by The Isley Brothers.
- May 3 – The Rolling Stones arrive by yacht to a press conference in New York City to announce the Voodoo Lounge Tour kicking off in the summer.
- May 6
- Pearl Jam files a complaint against Ticketmaster with the U.S. Justice Department charging that the company has a monopoly on the concert ticket business.
- To help promote his new album, Alice Cooper releases a three-part comic book that followed the album The Last Temptation.
- May 9–13 – 1994 International Rostrum of Composers
- May 10
- Tupac Shakur begins serving a 15-day sentence in a county jail for attacking director Allen Hughes on the set of a video shoot.
- Weezer are introduced to the world with their self-titled debut, often referred to as the Blue Album. It would go on to become one of the most influential records of the 1990s spawning hits "Undone – The Sweater Song", "Buddy Holly" and "Say It Ain't So".
- May 26 – Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley are married in the Dominican Republic.[13]
- May 27 – The Eagles launch the Hell Freezes Over tour in Burbank, California. The reunion tour is the group's first since breaking up in 1980, but much is also made of the band becoming the first to charge over $100 per ticket for arena shows.
- June 7 – Grace Slick is sentenced to 200 hours of community service and three months' worth of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings after a March 5 incident with police officers.
- June 9 – Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of TLC, in a domestic dispute with partner Andre Rison, sets fire to his shoes; the fire ultimately spreads to the mansion they share and destroys it.
- June 21 – George Michael loses his legal bid in a London court to be released from his contract with Sony Records.
- June 27 – Aerosmith becomes the first major band to premiere a new song on the Internet. Over 10,000 CompuServe subscribers download the free track "Head First" within its first eight days of availability.
July–August
- July 12–16 – The Yoyo A Go Go punk and indie rock festival opens in Olympia, Washington.
- July 30
- The Verbier Festival is launched.
- In keeping with the country's new constitution and the promotion of its native language, Moldova adopts Limba noastră as its new national anthem, replacing the anthem of Romania which was previously in use.
- Suede announce that guitarist Bernard Butler has left the band following fractious recording sessions for their album Dog Man Star.
- August 9
- Peter Maxwell Davies conducts the first performance of his fifth symphony at the Royal Albert Hall in London, as part of The Proms.[14]
- Rich Mullins and "Leave a Legacy" contest winner, 76-year-old Miguel Garcia Massiate, travel to Bogotá, Colombia, with Compassion International. The two men visit the Ciudad Sucre Center where Mullins presented them with over $40,000 that was raised on his summer '94 Ragamuffin Band tour.
- Decca releases a recording of the 1949 première of Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony for the first time.
- Machine Head release their first album Burn My Eyes, which was a big success and becomes Roadrunner Records' best selling debut album.
- August 11 – A compact disc copy of Sting's album Ten Summoner's Tales, released the previous year, becomes the first item securely purchased over the internet; the CD is sold for $12.48 plus shipping and handling fees.
- August 12–14 – Woodstock '94 is held in Saugerties, New York. As with the original 1969 festival, attendance is swelled by a high number of gatecrashers, while heavy rains turn the festival grounds into a sea of mud. Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Peter Gabriel, and Green Day are among the many performers.
- August 23 – Jeff Buckley releases his single, critically acclaimed,[citation needed] full-length studio album Grace.
- August 30
- Oasis release their debut album Definitely Maybe; it becomes the fastest selling debut album in the United Kingdom[citation needed] until 2006[citation needed] when it was beaten by the Arctic Monkeys' debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.[citation needed]
- Luis Miguel release Segundo Romance, the best-selling Latin album of the 1990s by a male artist.[citation needed] Four singles from the album were released; two of which reached No. 1 on the Top Latin Songs.[citation needed] It received a Grammy Award and a Billboard Latin Music Award.[citation needed]
September–October
- September 6
- José Cura wins the Operalia – International Plácido Domingo Opera Singer Competition.[15]
- Bad Religion release their eighth studio album (and proper major-label debut) Stranger than Fiction. This proved to be the last to feature founding guitarist/songwriter Brett Gurewitz for seven years, until his return. Gurewitz would be replaced by former Minor Threat / Dag Nasty / Junkyard guitarist Brian Baker, who turned down a touring job for R.E.M. at this time, and eventually becomes a permanent member of Bad Religion.
- September 8 – Richard A. Morse, lead male vocalist of RAM, narrowly escapes a kidnapping by armed men during the band's live performance at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; the attempted kidnapping was provoked by the performance of "Fèy", a RAM single banned nationwide by the military authorities.
- September 15 – A 1957 audio tape of John Lennon performing with The Quarrymen on the same night he met Paul McCartney fetches £78,500 at Sotheby's, London.[16]
- October 11 – Korn, a nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, launches its self-titled debut album, peaking at No. 72 on the Billboard 200[citation needed] and launching the nu metal sound.[citation needed]
- October 12 – Jimmy Page and Robert Plant: No Quarter (Unledded) premieres on MTV. The "unplugged" concert special featuring the two former Led Zeppelin bandmates was filmed to accompany the release of the album of the same name.
November–December
- November 20 – David Crosby undergoes a seven-hour liver transplant operation in Los Angeles.
- November 30 – The Breeders guitarist Kelley Deal is arrested at her Ohio home after accepting a private-courier package containing four grams of heroin.[17]
- December 2 – Warner Music Group acquires a 49 percent share of Seattle record label Sub Pop in a deal believed to be worth over $30 million.
- December 18 – Paul Oakenfold's legendary Goa Mix is first broadcast in the early hours of this day as a BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix.
- December 19 – Aerosmith opens the 250-seat Mama Kin Music Hall in Boston, co-owned by the group, with a performance.
- December 31 – The twenty-third annual New Year's Rockin' Eve special airs on ABC, with appearances by Melissa Etheridge, The O'Jays, Salt-n-Pepa, Hootie & the Blowfish and Jon Secada.
Also in 1994
- Christoph von Dohnányi becomes principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra.
- Josep Pons becomes principal conductor of the City of Granada Orchestra.
- Christian Olde Wolbers replaces Andrew Shives in Fear Factory.
- ALL part ways with their original home Cruz Records, and sign a recording contract with Interscope (though they shortly leave that label after releasing an album in the following year).
- The Offspring frontman Dexter Holland and bassist Greg Kriesel form the label Nitro Records, an incubator for successful punk artists such as AFI. The label later releases albums from classic punk bands, including The Damned and T.S.O.L., and also reissues the first Offspring album.
- Social Distortion manager Jim Guerinot forms the label Time Bomb Recordings in joint-venture agreement with Arista. The label actually exists mostly as an imprint for current releases from Social Distortion and solo albums by Mike Ness, along with the administration of the label's back catalog.
- Summer – Tony Wilson attempts to revive Factory Records, in collaboration with London Records, as "Factory Too".[18]
- Former Wolfsbane lead singer Blaze Bayley auditions and is hired by Iron Maiden.
Bands formed
Bands disbanded
Bands reformed
- Circle Jerks (hiatus since 1989)
- King Crimson (since 1984)
- Eagles (disbanded in 1980)