History Highlight:

Paula Cole was born today in 1968, making her 50 today. Her single "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" from her second studio album This Fire, reached the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1997, and the following year she won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. As Jade will tell you, her song "I Don't Want to Wait" was used as the theme song of the television show Dawson's Creek.

Also, Today In:

1958 - The first "Greatest Hits" compilation is released, and it's by Johnny Mathis. It's a huge hit, and the format catches on quickly. The Mathis album stays in the Billboard 200 album chart for over 9 years, a record not broken until Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon.

1968 - James Brown played Live at the Boston Garden and it was broadcast live in an effort to quell potential riots in the city.

1985 - At 3:50 pm Greenwich Mountain Time, 5,000 radio stations around the world played the benefit single "We Are The World" simultaneously.

1980 - R.E.M. played their first ever gig when they appeared at St Mary's Episcopal Church, Athens, Georgia. The band had no name at this point - according to Michael Stipe, they had considered "Twisted Kites", "Negro Wives" and "Cans of Piss" - but they settled on "R.E.M." after Stipe selected it at random from a dictionary. Fortunately.

1994 - Kurt Cobain of Nirvana committed suicide by firearm at his home in Seattle. Strangely, like Jimi, Janis, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones, he was 27 when he died. Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic in in 1985 and established it as part of the Seattle music scene and grunge genre. Despite releasing only three full-length studio albums in their seven-year career, Nirvana has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and important rock bands of the modern era.

2002 - Layne Staley, lead singer of Alice in Chains passed away at age 34.

2006 - World-renowned American singer/songwriter Gene Pitney died at the age of 66. He charted 16 Top 40 US hits and 22 Top 40 hits in the UK. He also wrote the early 60s hits "He's A Rebel" by The Crystals and "Hello, Mary Lou" by Ricky Nelson. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2002.

2008 - Apple's iTunes overtook Wal-Mart to become the largest music retailer in the US.

2008 - Toto broke up after performing their final concert in Seoul.

2009 - Donald Trump fired TLC member Tionne Watkins, better known by her stage name T-Boz, in the sixth week of The Celebrity Apprentice, season 8.

2011 - A statue in tribute to Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain was unveiled in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington. The unveiling marked the 17th anniversary of Cobain's death, which occurred on April 5, 1994.

Birthdays:

Everett Morton, drummer for the British 80s ska band The Beat, is 67.

Jacob Slichter, drummer for Semisonic, is 57.

Christopher 'Kid' Reid (Kid N Play) is 54.

Mike McCready, lead guitarist for Pearl Jam, is 52.

Pharrell Williams is 45.

Highlights for Today in Music History are gathered from This Day in Music, Paul Shaffer's Day in Rock, Song Facts and Wikipedia.