Drag to explore · click a scene to hear its story
Riffiter Floor rebuilds famous moments in music history as small animated pixel scenes. Drag to look around, scroll or pinch to zoom, and click a scene to read what happened that day.
Monterey County Fairgrounds · 18 Jun 1967
This was the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first show in America. Hendrix and the Who had tossed a coin for the running order, the Who went on first that night and ended with Pete Townshend smashing his guitar, so Hendrix needed a bigger finish.
Rate Live at MontereySt John’s Wood, London · 8 Aug 1969
Iain Macmillan climbed a stepladder in the middle of the road while a policeman held the traffic back. He had about ten minutes and shot six frames as the band walked over the crossing outside EMI’s studios. The fifth one went on the sleeve.
Rate Abbey RoadWembley Stadium, London · 13 Jul 1985
Queen came on at 6:41 in the evening with about twenty minutes to play. Freddie Mercury opened at the piano with a cut-down “Bohemian Rhapsody”, then stood up for “Radio Ga Ga”, and 72,000 people clapped the chorus above their heads in time with him.
Rate Live Aid, Wembley 1985Dolphin Stadium, Miami Gardens · 4 Feb 2007
It was the first Super Bowl halftime show to get rained on. Hours before, the producer rang Prince to warn him about the downpour, and Prince asked whether they could make it rain harder. He played on a stage shaped like his own symbol, in a turquoise suit with a scarf over his hair, with the Florida A&M Marching 100 on the field around him.
Rate Purple Rain3 Savile Row, London · 30 Jan 1969
At lunchtime on a cold Thursday the Beatles carried their gear onto the roof of their own Apple offices and played for 42 minutes, with Billy Preston on electric piano. Ringo borrowed his wife’s red raincoat against the cold. Office workers filled the street below and climbed onto the roofs across the road. It was the last time the four of them played in public.
Rate Let It BeSony Music Studios, New York · 18 Nov 1993
Kurt Cobain asked for stargazer lilies, black candles and a crystal chandelier. When the producer asked whether he meant something like a funeral, Cobain said: “Exactly. Like a funeral.” The band played fourteen songs in a single take, with Pat Smear on guitar, Lori Goldston on cello and Krist Novoselic switching to accordion for one song.
Rate MTV Unplugged in New YorkFolsom State Prison, California · 13 Jan 1968
Cash played two shows inside Folsom on the same day, at 9:40 in the morning and 12:40 in the afternoon, to the men the record would be named after. He opened both with “Folsom Prison Blues”, backed by the Tennessee Three, with June Carter, Carl Perkins and the Statler Brothers on the bill.
Rate At Folsom PrisonNewport Folk Festival, Rhode Island · 25 Jul 1965
Bob Dylan walked on with a sunburst Fender Stratocaster and a pick-up band that included Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s rhythm section. They played three songs, about fifteen minutes, starting with “Maggie’s Farm”, and part of the crowd booed. People still argue about whether they booed the electric guitars, the short set or the sound.
Rate Highway 61 RevisitedCoachella, Indio, California · 14 Apr 2018
Beyoncé became the first Black woman to headline Coachella, and she built the set as an HBCU homecoming: a full marching band on a pyramid of bleachers, steppers, majorettes and around a hundred dancers. She played 26 songs to a crowd of about 125,000, with millions more watching the stream.
Rate Homecoming: The Live AlbumPasadena Civic Auditorium · taped 25 Mar 1983
The Jacksons reunited for a medley of their Motown hits on a TV special celebrating the label. Then his brothers walked off, and Michael stayed on alone in a black sequined jacket, one white glove and a fedora, and danced to “Billie Jean”, mimed to the record. It was the only non-Motown song performed on the show.
Rate ThrillerMax Yasgur’s farm, Bethel, New York · 18 Aug 1969
Jimi Hendrix closed Woodstock, but the festival had run so late that he went on at nine on Monday morning. By then the crowd of around half a million had shrunk to about 40,000, standing in mud and rubbish. He played for two hours with a new band, Gypsy Sun & Rainbows.
Rate Live at WoodstockCBS, New York City · 6 Jan 1957
This was Elvis's third and final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. After complaints about his hip movements on the first two visits, CBS had the cameras frame him from the waist up for most of the night. He sang seven songs over three segments, among them “Hound Dog”, “Don't Be Cruel” and “Too Much”, and closed with the gospel song “Peace in the Valley”.
Rate Elvis PresleyCBS Studio 50, New York City · 9 Feb 1964
The Beatles' first US television appearance drew about 73 million viewers, roughly 60 percent of everyone watching TV that night. Only 728 seats were available inside CBS's Studio 50, against an estimated 50,000 ticket requests. John, Paul, George and Ringo opened with “All My Loving”, then Paul sang “Till There Was You”, followed by “She Loves You”.
Rate Meet The Beatles!Radio City Music Hall, New York City · 13 Sep 2009
Taylor Swift, 19, had just won Best Female Video for “You Belong with Me” when Kanye West walked on stage, took the microphone out of her hand, and told the crowd that Beyoncé's “Single Ladies” video was “one of the best videos of all time.” He then handed the mic back and left the stage.
Rate Fearless (Taylor's Version)Radio City Music Hall, New York City · 14 Sep 1984
At the very first MTV Video Music Awards, Madonna rose out of a 17-foot wedding cake in a white dress, a bustier and a belt buckle reading “BOY TOY”, and sang “Like a Virgin” while rolling around the stage floor. Partway through, one of her white stiletto heels slipped off.
Rate Like a VirginRoman amphitheatre, Pompeii, Italy · 4-7 Oct 1971
Director Adrian Maben filmed Pink Floyd inside the Roman amphitheatre at Pompeii with no audience beyond the film crew. He meant it as a reaction to concert films like Woodstock and Gimme Shelter, where the crowd got as much screen time as the band. They set up their full rig on the arena floor, gong included, and played there over four days in October 1971.
Rate Pink Floyd at Pompeii - MCMLXXII (2025 Mix)River Thames, near Westminster, London · 7 Jun 1977
Two days before the Queen's Silver Jubilee river pageant, manager Malcolm McLaren chartered a boat called the Queen Elizabeth and sent the Sex Pistols down the Thames past the Houses of Parliament, in the same week their single “God Save the Queen” was banned from BBC airplay for mocking the monarchy. Melody Maker's Allan Jones remembers them opening with “Anarchy in the U.K.”; nobody agrees on the rest of the set.
Rate Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex PistolsNational Stadium, Kingston, Jamaica · 22 Apr 1978
Jamaica had spent most of the 1970s torn between the governing People's National Party and the opposition Jamaica Labour Party, with gang violence tied to both sides. The One Love Peace Concert, organized by two rival gunmen who had met in prison, brought 16 reggae acts to the National Stadium in front of more than 32,000 people to try to cool it down.
Rate ExodusReading Festival, Reading, England · 30 Aug 1992
Rumors that Kurt Cobain was too sick or too strung out to perform had been circling before Nirvana's headline slot at Reading. Cobain answered them by having music journalist Everett True wheel him onstage in a wheelchair, dressed in a hospital gown and a blond wig. He sang a few lines of Bette Midler's “The Rose”.
Rate Live at ReadingPyramid Stage, Glastonbury Festival, England · 28 Jun 1997
1997 was a mud year at Glastonbury: heavy rain had turned the site into a bog before Radiohead took the Pyramid Stage on the Saturday night. On stage the monitors kept failing and Thom Yorke couldn't hear himself sing. At one point he went over to guitarist Ed O'Brien and told him he was off.
Rate OK ComputerKnebworth Park, Hertfordshire, England · 10-11 Aug 1996
At the height of Britpop, Oasis played two nights at Knebworth Park to a combined 250,000 people. About 2.6 million people, roughly 5 percent of the UK population at the time, tried to get tickets, mostly on landline booking lines and in queues outside record shops, and both nights sold out in under a day.
Rate (What's the Story) Morning Glory?Sahara Tent, Indio, CA · 29 Apr 2006
On the night of Saturday 29 April 2006, Daft Punk played the Sahara Tent at Coachella, a dance stage built for about 10,000 people. More than 40,000 tried to get in, so organizers ran extra speaker stacks and jumbotron screens outside the tent for everyone who couldn't fit. It was the duo's first US show since 1997.
Rate Alive 2007Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury · 28 Jun 2008
Glastonbury announced Jay-Z as a headliner on 1 February 2008, the first big hip-hop act to top the bill. In April Noel Gallagher objected in an interview: “Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music. I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong.”
Rate The Black AlbumPantages Theatre, Hollywood · 13-16 Dec 1983
Talking Heads played four nights at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood in December 1983, touring behind Speaking in Tongues, and Jonathan Demme filmed the shows for what became the concert film Stop Making Sense. The film builds the stage piece by piece, starting with David Byrne alone and adding a musician with each song until the full band and backing singers are on stage together.
Rate Stop Making SenseShea Stadium, New York · 15 Aug 1965
On 15 August 1965, the Beatles played William A. Shea Stadium in Queens to 55,600 fans, at the time the biggest crowd ever assembled for a pop concert. They arrived by helicopter over Manhattan, then rode a Wells Fargo armored van onto the field, and took a stage built on second base. Ed Sullivan introduced them before they ran out under floodlights.
Rate Help!Platz der Republik, West Berlin · 6 Jun 1987
In June 1987, David Bowie played the Concert for Berlin, a three-day outdoor festival staged on the Platz der Republik in front of the Reichstag, right beside the Berlin Wall. Organizers pointed a share of the speaker stacks east, and thousands of East Berliners gathered on the far side of the wall to listen to a concert they could never attend.
Rate “Heroes”Potsdamer Platz, Berlin · 21 Jul 1990
On 21 July 1990, Roger Waters performed Pink Floyd's The Wall in full on empty ground between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate, land that had sat inside the Wall's death strip eight months earlier. Waters sang much of it himself, with guest singers taking the lead on other songs, among them Sinéad O'Connor, Cyndi Lauper, Bryan Adams, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.
Rate The Wall: Live in BerlinTop of the Pops, London · 6 Jul 1972
David Bowie taped “Starman” for Top of the Pops on 5 July 1972 at BBC Television Centre, and it aired the next night to millions of British teenagers. In a rainbow jumpsuit and dyed red hair, he sang the line “I had to phone someone, so I picked on you” and pointed straight down the lens, as if singling out every kid watching at home.
Rate The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From MarsCBS Studios, Los Angeles · 17 Sep 1967
The Who closed their spot on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with “My Generation” and their usual set-closing routine of smashing gear. The segment was taped on 15 September 1967 and aired two days later. Drummer Keith Moon had bribed a stagehand to pack roughly ten times the normal amount of flash powder into his bass drum, far more than Pete Townshend had agreed to.
Rate My GenerationCoachella, Indio, CA · 15 Apr 2012
During Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's closing set at Coachella on 15 April 2012, a lifelike image of Tupac Shakur rose out of the darkness, shirtless in sagging jeans with a THUG LIFE tattoo across his stomach and a gold cross around his neck. He shouted to the crowd, performed “Hail Mary”, then traded verses with Snoop on “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” before fading out.
Rate All Eyez on MeTampa Stadium, Tampa · 27 Jan 1991
Ten days into the Gulf War, Whitney Houston walked out in a white tracksuit and headband to sing the national anthem before Super Bowl XXV. The Florida Orchestra, led by Jahja Ling, backed her with an arrangement by bassist John Clayton.
Rate The Star Spangled Banner (feat. The Florida Orchestra) (Live from Super Bowl XXV)Tushino Airfield, Moscow · 28 Sep 1991
Weeks after the failed August coup against Gorbachev, AC/DC, Metallica, the Black Crowes, Pantera and the Soviet band E.S.T. played a free outdoor show at Tushino Airfield on the edge of Moscow. The organizers had about three weeks to put it together, including a stage nine stories tall.
Rate Enter Sandman (Live at Tushino Airfield, Moscow, Russia / September 28th, 1991)US Capitol, Washington DC · 20 Jan 2009
On a 28-degree morning on the Capitol's West Front, Aretha Franklin sang “My Country, 'Tis of Thee” right after the invocation, ahead of Obama's oath. She wore a grey wool coat, grey gloves and a grey felt hat with an oversized bow studded with Swarovski crystals. Luke Song, a Detroit-area milliner whose hats she had bought for years, made it.
Rate Lady SoulHyde Park, London · 5 Jul 1969
On 5 July 1969 the Rolling Stones played a free show in Hyde Park in front of a crowd estimated between 250,000 and 500,000 people. It was meant to introduce new guitarist Mick Taylor, who had barely rehearsed with the band. Two days earlier, founding member Brian Jones had been found dead in his swimming pool, so the show became a memorial instead.
Rate Beggars BanquetCentral Park, New York City · 19 Sep 1981
On 19 September 1981, Simon & Garfunkel played a free reunion concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park. Around 500,000 people came, though police at the time estimated the crowd closer to 400,000. It was their first full show together in years, staged as a benefit to help pay for repairs to a park that had fallen into disrepair.
Rate The Concert in Central ParkNokia Theatre, Los Angeles · 12 Sep 2010
At the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles on 12 September, Lady Gaga accepted the Video of the Year award for “Bad Romance” wearing a dress made of raw flank steak, with matching boots, purse and hat. Designer Franc Fernandez made it from meat from his family's butcher, and Nicola Formichetti styled the look.
Rate The Fame MonsterMetropolitan Opera House, New York City · 6 Sep 2001
At the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards, Britney Spears stepped out of a gilded cage with a white tiger behind her and sang “I'm a Slave 4 U”. For the last part of the number she wore Banana, an albino Burmese python about seven feet long, across her shoulders, and let it slide over her arms as she moved down the runway.
Rate BritneyDodger Stadium, Los Angeles · 25 Oct 1975
On October 25 and 26, 1975, Elton John played two sold-out shows at Dodger Stadium, the first concerts held there since the Beatles nearly a decade earlier. About 55,000 fans came each night. For part of the set he wore a sequinned Los Angeles Dodgers uniform and cap designed by Bob Mackie, with "ELTON" and the number 1 stitched on the back, and climbed onto the top of his piano during the show.
Rate Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt CowboyBaths of Caracalla, Rome · 7 Jul 1990
On 7 July 1990, the night before Italy hosted the World Cup final, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras stood on one stage together for the first time, inside the ruined Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Zubin Mehta conducted the orchestras of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. About 6,000 people sat among the ancient brick walls, and hundreds of millions more watched on television around the world.
Rate Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in ConcertState Farm Stadium, Glendale · 12 Feb 2023
At Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Rihanna opened her set on a floating platform high above the field, singing “Bitch Better Have My Money” in a red Loewe jumpsuit. Dancers in white ski-style suits and goggles stood on their own suspended platforms around her.
Rate UnapologeticRose Bowl, Pasadena · 31 Jan 1993
At Super Bowl XXVII in Pasadena, Michael Jackson was launched onto a stage built in the middle of the field and then stood completely still for close to 90 seconds, arms slightly spread, sunglasses on, saying and singing nothing while the crowd screamed. Only when his guitarist Jennifer Batten started to play did he move, breaking into “Jam” in front of 98,374 people inside the stadium and a television audience of about 133 million.
Rate DangerousRiverside Studios, London · 10 Feb 2008
On 10 February 2008, Amy Winehouse could not fly to Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards after US officials refused her visa; the decision was reversed two days before the show, too late to travel. Producers built a small nightclub-style stage inside Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London, and beamed her set to the Staples Center by satellite. At about 3am local time, she sang “You Know I'm No Good” and “Rehab” in front of a few dozen guests seated at cocktail tables.
Rate Back to BlackWembley Stadium, London · 1 Jun 2019
BTS played two nights at Wembley Stadium on 1 and 2 June 2019, becoming the first K-pop act to headline the ground. Tickets for the first show sold out in 90 minutes. Across both nights, 114,583 people filled the stadium for the European leg of the Love Yourself: Speak Yourself tour, part of a run that grossed over 100 million dollars worldwide.
Rate LOVE YOURSELF 結 'Answer'Brighton Dome, Brighton · 6 Apr 1974
On 6 April 1974, ABBA performed “Waterloo” eighth in the running order at the Eurovision Song Contest, held inside the Brighton Dome. Conductor Sven-Olof Walldoff led the orchestra dressed as Napoleon, a costume joke that got a laugh from the hall before Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad stepped up in glittery, chain-covered outfits with silver platform boots.
Rate WaterlooHonolulu International Center Arena, Honolulu · 14 Jan 1973
On January 14, 1973, Elvis Presley performed at the Honolulu International Center Arena while the show was beamed live by satellite to Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, South Vietnam and Australia. He opened in a white jumpsuit patterned with a gold, blue and red gem eagle across the chest, backed by James Burton on guitar and Ronnie Tutt on drums, and worked through a 22-song set.
Rate Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite (Live)Boston Garden, Boston · 5 Apr 1968
On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Memphis, James Brown played Boston Garden as unrest spread through other American cities. Mayor Kevin White let the show go ahead and had it broadcast live on WGBH-TV, hoping it would keep people home instead of in the streets. Brown and his band worked through eleven songs and medleys, including “I Got You (I Feel Good)” and “Please, Please, Please.”
Rate Say It Loud: I'm Black and I'm ProudMadison Square Garden, New York · 19 Jul 1986
On the Raising Hell tour, Run-DMC headlined Madison Square Garden on 19 July 1986, and their co-manager Lyor Cohen had invited an Adidas executive, Angelo Anastasio, to see it. During “My Adidas”, Run told DMC to take a shoe off and hold it up, then told everyone in the building wearing Adidas to do the same, and thousands of sneakers went up at once.
Rate Raising HellSpike Island, Widnes · 27 May 1990
The Stone Roses had never played a show this big before 27 May 1990, when they headlined an outdoor site called Spike Island in Widnes, Cheshire, on the banks of the Mersey. Around 28,000 tickets were sold, with more fans getting in without one, on a bill the band put together themselves rather than joining an existing festival.
Rate The Stone RosesBBC Television Centre, London · 24 Nov 1983
The Smiths made their Top of the Pops debut on 24 November 1983, miming to “This Charming Man”. Channel 4's The Tube had aired a film of the song three weeks earlier. Morrissey disliked lip-syncing and used a bunch of gladioli as a prop instead of holding the microphone, swinging them around as he moved across the stage while Johnny Marr stood his ground beside him.
Rate Hatful of HollowO2 Arena, London · 10 Dec 2007
Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones played their first full concert in 27 years on 10 December 2007, a benefit for Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who had died the year before. John Bonham's son Jason sat behind the drums in his father's place.
Rate Celebration DayEstádio do Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro · 16 Jan 1988
On the Break Every Rule world tour, Tina Turner played Rio de Janeiro's Maracanã stadium on 16 January 1988 and drew a paying crowd of 180,000, breaking the 175,000 Frank Sinatra had drawn at the same stadium in 1980. Guinness World Records logged it as the largest paying audience ever recorded for a solo artist.
Rate All the Best: The HitsCopacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro · 31 Dec 1994
Rod Stewart rang in 1995 with a free show on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, part of the city's annual New Year's Eve fireworks celebration. Guinness World Records lists it as the largest attendance for a free concert, at 3.5 million people along the beach.
Rate Never a Dull MomentCBS Studio 50, New York · 17 Sept 1967
The Doors were booked to play "Light My Fire" live on The Ed Sullivan Show on 17 September 1967. A producer asked them to change the line "Girl, we couldn't get much higher," worried the word "higher" read as a drug reference on a family broadcast. The band agreed backstage, then didn't change a word once the cameras rolled.
Rate The DoorsStaples Center, Los Angeles · 21 Feb 2001
Eminem won three Grammys on 21 February 2001, including Best Rap Album for The Marshall Mathers LP, while GLAAD picketed outside the Staples Center over lyrics on the record it called anti-gay. Inside, Eminem performed “Stan” with Elton John, who played piano and sang Dido's chorus.
Rate The Marshall Mathers LPCaesars Superdome, New Orleans · 9 Feb 2025
Kendrick Lamar became the first rapper to headline a Super Bowl halftime show as a solo artist on 9 February 2025, opening with Samuel L. Jackson in an Uncle Sam costume introducing the “great American game”. The stage was built to look like part of a PlayStation controller, and dancers in red, white and blue lined up to form a divided American flag.
Rate GNXNRG Stadium, Houston · 5 Feb 2017
Lady Gaga began the Super Bowl LI halftime show standing on the roof of NRG Stadium, singing lines of “God Bless America” and “This Land Is Your Land” as fireworks lit the sky around her. A swarm of 300 Intel drones rose behind her in red, white and blue, and as she dove from the roof toward the stadium bowl they locked into an American flag.
Rate The FameAbbey Road Studios, London · 25 Jun 1967
On 25 June 1967 the Beatles represented Britain on Our World, the first live television programme broadcast by satellite to the whole globe, watched by an estimated 400 to 700 million people in 24 countries. John Lennon had written “All You Need Is Love” for the occasion, after the band were asked for a song with a message simple enough for anyone to understand.
Rate Magical Mystery TourRadrennbahn Weissensee, East Berlin · 19 Jul 1988
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played the Radrennbahn Weissensee cycling stadium in East Berlin on 19 July 1988. Officially 160,000 tickets were sold, but the gates were thrown open and estimates put the crowd at 300,000 or more, some as high as 500,000. It was the largest concert ever held in East Germany.
Rate Born in the U.S.A.Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles · 25 Mar 2001
At the 73rd Academy Awards on 25 March 2001, Björk arrived on the red carpet in a dress by Macedonian designer Marjan Pejoski shaped like a swan, its neck wrapped around her with the head resting on her chest, above a skirt of white ruffles trimmed with goose and swan feathers. It was immediately mocked on worst-dressed lists.
Rate Selmasongs: Music from the Motion Picture "Dancer in the Dark"Times Square, New York City · 31 Dec 2016
Mariah Carey took the Times Square stage for Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on 31 December 2016 and could not hear anything through her in-ear monitors. She told the crowd, “We didn't have a sound check for this,” and through “Emotions” kept saying she couldn't hear the track.
Rate EmotionsLake Compounce, Bristol, Connecticut · 21 Jul 1989
On 21 July 1989, Milli Vanilli were performing “Girl You Know It's True” on the Club MTV Tour at Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut when the backing track jammed, repeating the line “Girl, you know it's...” over and over while Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus kept dancing. The pair had never sung on their own records; the vocals belonged to session singers hired by producer Frank Farian.
Rate Girl You Know It's TrueWembley Stadium, London → JFK Stadium, Philadelphia · 13 Jul 1985
Phil Collins went on at Wembley Stadium at 3:18pm, playing piano for Sting and running through his own songs, including “Against All Odds” and “In the Air Tonight.” Straight after the set he took a helicopter, flown by Noel Edmonds, to Heathrow, then boarded a British Airways Concorde to New York.
Rate No Jacket RequiredNBC Studios, Burbank · 27 Jun 1968 (aired 3 Dec 1968)
On 27 June 1968, Elvis Presley filmed two sit-down shows for NBC on a small stage built like a boxing ring, dressed in a black leather suit made by Bill Belew. He was surrounded by a small crowd, some invited from a restaurant across the street after ticket distribution fell through, and backed by his original 1950s musicians Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana.
Rate Memories: The '68 Comeback SpecialPyramid Stage, Glastonbury · 28 Jun 2019
Stormzy headlined the Pyramid Stage on 28 June 2019, the first Black British solo artist and first grime artist to top the bill at Glastonbury. He walked out in a stab-proof vest spray-painted by Banksy with a black-and-white Union Jack, a piece about the UK's knife crime crisis that Stormzy later donated to London's Design Museum.
Rate Gang Signs & PrayerFortnite, worldwide servers · 23–25 Apr 2020
Astronomical ran five times between 23 and 25 April 2020, a Travis Scott show that Epic Games built inside Fortnite. A purple meteor hit the island and a Travis Scott avatar the height of a building climbed out of the crater to “Sicko Mode”.
Rate ASTROWORLDRed Square, Moscow · 24 May 2003
On 24 May 2003, Paul McCartney played Red Square in Moscow on his Back in the World tour. It was his first concert in Russia, where the Beatles' records had been kept off the market for years in the Soviet era. Over nearly three hours he played Beatles songs including “Hey Jude,” “Let It Be,” “Eleanor Rigby” and “Back in the U.S.S.R.” alongside his solo material, and spoke to the crowd in Russian between songs.
Rate In Red Square: A Concert FilmVeterans Memorial Auditorium, Des Moines · 20 Jan 1982
Ozzy Osbourne was playing a show on the Diary of a Madman tour when a bat landed near his feet. Seventeen-year-old Mark Neal had thrown it from the crowd. Osbourne, who had been getting dead animals and rubber snakes thrown at him all tour, picked it up and bit into it, thinking it was fake.
Rate Diary of a MadmanSaturday Night Live, New York · 3 Oct 1992
Sinéad O'Connor was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live and sang Bob Marley's “War” a cappella, changing the lyrics to name child abuse instead of racism. At dress rehearsal she had held up a photo of a refugee child. On the live broadcast she held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II instead, tore it into pieces, said “Fight the real enemy” and threw the pieces toward the camera.
Rate Am I Not Your Girl?Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco · 25 Nov 1976
On Thanksgiving night 1976, The Band played their last show together at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, the venue where they had made their 1969 debut as The Band. Promoter Bill Graham served a full turkey dinner to the 5,000-strong crowd before the music started, and dancers filled the floor to a waltz orchestra ahead of the band's opening song, “Up on Cripple Creek”.
Rate The Last WaltzMonterey County Fairgrounds, California · 18 Jun 1967
Big Brother and the Holding Company, a little-known San Francisco band, played the Monterey International Pop Festival on the afternoon of 17 June 1967. Their set was not filmed for the festival documentary, so organizers asked the band to play again the next evening, 18 June, and that repeat is the one in the film.
Rate Cheap ThrillsHyde Park, London · 2 Jul 2005
Roger Waters had left Pink Floyd in 1985 after years of feuding with the rest of the band, and the four had not shared a stage since 1981. Live 8 organiser Bob Geldof pushed for a reunion anyway, and Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright agreed to set the argument aside for one night at the benefit concert.
Rate The Dark Side of the MoonKennedy Center Opera House, Washington · 6 Dec 2015
Aretha Franklin sang “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” for Carole King, one of the 2015 Kennedy Center honorees and a co-writer of the song with Gerry Goffin and Jerry Wexler. Chilina Kennedy, then playing King on Broadway in Beautiful, brought her on. Franklin came out in a floor-length mink, put her clutch down on the grand piano and played the first verse herself.
Rate Lady SoulHouston Astrodome · 26 Feb 1995
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez closed the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo on 26 February 1995, riding into the Astrodome on a white carriage across the rodeo's dirt floor as the sold-out crowd roared. She opened in a long-sleeved bolero jacket over a purple jumpsuit she had designed herself, running through a disco medley of “I Will Survive”, “Funkytown”, “Last Dance”, “The Hustle” and “On the Radio” before turning to her own songs from Amor Prohibido.
Rate Amor ProhibidoComiskey Park, Chicago · 12 Jul 1979
Rock DJ Steve Dahl, fired from WDAI when it switched to disco on Christmas Eve 1978, teamed with White Sox promotions director Mike Veeck on a between-games stunt: anyone who brought a disco record to that night's doubleheader against Detroit got in for 98 cents, and the records would be blown up in center field. The White Sox hoped for 20,000. Comiskey Park, capacity 44,492, recorded 47,795 paid; owner Bill Veeck estimated 50,000 to 55,000 inside, with thousands more locked out.
Rate Risqué41st Grammy Awards, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles · 24 Feb 1999
Ricky Martin opened the 41st Grammy Awards with a bilingual “The Cup of Life”, already a worldwide hit as the official song of the 1998 World Cup. A 15-piece band, dancers and percussionists filled the stage in bright carnival colour, and partway through, the dancers broke into a conga line that snaked up and down the Shrine Auditorium’s aisles and pulled the room into the song.
Rate La Copa de la VidaMadison Square Garden, New York · 28 Apr 2022
Burna Boy was the first African artist to headline and sell out Madison Square Garden, and 20,789 people came for his One Night in Space show. Busta Rhymes opened the night with a short thank-you, and the arena was already chanting “Burna, Burna, Burna” before he walked out. He started with “Level Up” from Twice as Tall. Youssou N'Dour came out to sing his own verse, nodded to him and walked off.
Rate African GiantFreebody Park, Newport Jazz Festival · 7 July 1956, just before midnight
Duke Ellington's orchestra had spent the mid-1950s sidelined by bebop and cool jazz. At Newport they closed with "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," a piece Ellington wrote in 1937, and put an interlude in the middle for tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves. With only Jimmy Woode on bass, Sam Woodyard on drums and Ellington's piano behind him, Gonsalves played 27 choruses straight.
Rate Ellington at NewportMadison Square Garden, New York · 1 August 1971
The Concert for Bangladesh opened with Ravi Shankar, not a rock band. George Harrison walked out alone, told the Garden they had a good show lined up and introduced Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. The Indian musicians sat down to play and started tuning their instruments, as Indian classical players do on stage.
Rate The Concert for BangladeshSeoul Plaza, in front of City Hall · 4 Oct 2012
Psy had promised a free show at Seoul Plaza if "Gangnam Style" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It stalled at number two, and he played it anyway on 4 October 2012, a Thursday night, in front of Seoul City Hall. The city paid for lighting, sound, screens and security, extended buses and the subway until 2 a.m., and reports put the crowd at about 80,000, well over the 50,000 first expected.
Rate PSY 6 (Six Rules), Part 1Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara · 8 Feb 2026
Bad Bunny, the first solo Latino headliner of a Super Bowl halftime show, started in a built sugarcane field full of vendors, domino players and farmers in straw hats, rapping "Tití Me Preguntó" while he walked through the furrows. The show then moved to a pink concrete-brick house, La Casita, where Cardi B, Jessica Alba, Pedro Pascal and Karol G danced on the porch while he crashed through the roof.
Rate DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToSStadium Australia, Sydney · 1 Oct 2000
In the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics, Midnight Oil came on in black clothes with the word SORRY in big white letters and played “Beds Are Burning”, their 1987 song about Aboriginal land rights. The band had told no one. The gesture answered Prime Minister John Howard’s refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generations, the Aboriginal children removed from their families.
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