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Eric Clapton — Unplugged (1992): When a Loud Guitarist Learned to Play Quietly
A Room, a Chair, and Nowhere to Hide There is a particular kind of courage in sitting down. For most of his career, Eric Clapton had been heard through volume, speed, and electricity: the long solo, the band pushing behind him, the roar that could fill an arena and carry a song even when the…
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George Harrison and the Concert for Bangladesh: The Afternoon That Invented the Benefit Concert
A Sunday in New York that changed what a concert could do On Sunday, 1 August 1971, Madison Square Garden in New York City hosted not one concert but two. The afternoon show began at 2:30 and the evening show at 8:00, and together they drew a total audience of about 40,000 people. The occasion…
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Paul McCartney: Band on the Run, the Lagos Gamble That Saved Wings
In the summer of 1973, Paul McCartney made a decision that, by his own later admission, was based on a romantic fantasy. He decided to record his new album in Lagos, Nigeria, because he liked the idea of working in an exotic location, of sunbathing on the beach during the day and recording at night,…
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Billy Joel: The Piano Man Who Took Rock Behind the Iron Curtain
In the summer of 1987, Billy Joel did something that no American rock star had done before on quite the same scale. He took a full American stadium rock show, with its lights, its sound system, its band, and its audience participation, into the Soviet Union, and he played six concerts in Moscow and Leningrad…
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Whitney Houston: The Two Minutes That Became America’s Anthem
On 27 January 1991, at Tampa Stadium in Florida, Whitney Houston walked onto a football field in a white tracksuit and sang the American national anthem before Super Bowl XXV. She sang for a little over two minutes. The performance that followed is widely regarded as the greatest rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” ever given…
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Madonna: How Like a Virgin and One Wedding Dress Changed Pop Forever
On 14 September 1984, at the first ever MTV Video Music Awards, a relatively unknown singer walked out on stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York, climbed down from a giant wedding cake in a white wedding dress, and performed a song that had not yet been released. Within minutes, she was the…
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Michael Jackson: How the Thriller Short Film Changed Music Video Forever
By late 1983, Michael Jackson did not need another hit. His album Thriller, released in November 1982, was already the biggest-selling album in the world, and it had produced a string of singles that had dominated radio and MTV for a year. The album’s title track, however, had not yet been released as a single,…
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Prince: How Purple Rain Made Him a Superstar in One Summer
In the summer of 1984, Prince did something that no musician had done before. For a period that summer, he simultaneously held the number one film, the number one album, and the number one single in the United States. The film was Purple Rain, the album was Purple Rain, and the single was “When Doves…
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Stevie Wonder: The Song That Helped Make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a Holiday
There are songs that capture a moment, and there are songs that help to change the calendar. Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday,” released in 1980, belongs to the second group. It is a joyful, danceable song, full of the bright keyboards and unstoppable melody that made Wonder one of the defining musicians of the 1970s. It…
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Tina Turner: How Private Dancer Turned a Survivor Into a Superstar
By the early 1980s, Tina Turner was a famous name with an uncertain future. Millions of people knew her voice, her legs, her hair, and the ferocious energy she had brought to stages with Ike Turner. Far fewer people were buying her records. She had left Ike in the mid-1970s, endured a difficult divorce, and…