Curated playlist
American HIV/AIDS activists
- Michael JacksonMichael Jackson bought a music catalog with most of the Beatles's material in 1985. He paid 47.5 million dollars.
- Lady GagaLady Gaga's name may have come from a phone typo. Producer Rob Fusari said autocorrect turned "Radio Ga Ga" into "Lady".
- Whitney HoustonWhitney Houston sold more than 220 million records and carried a nickname that needed no first name: "the Voice". She was born in 1963 and died in 2012. In between, she became one of the most awarded performers in history. In 2023, Rolling…
- Janet JacksonJanet Jackson was seen at the 1983 American Music Awards wearing a hoop earring with a key attached to it. She has worn variations of that earring in music videos and live shows ever since. The pair she wore between 1987 and 1990 is now on…
- Kirsten DunstKirsten Dunst was ten years old when she shared a screen kiss with Brad Pitt, an actor two decades her senior, and her verdict was blunt. "I thought it was gross, that Brad had cooties. I mean, I was 10," she recalled. Dunst, an American…
- SelenaSelena Quintanilla-Pérez was 23 years old when she died on the 31st of March 1995, and major television networks interrupted their regular programming to announce it. She was a singer from Texas who performed Tejano music, a…
- Christina AguileraChristina Aguilera sang "A Sunday Kind of Love" on the television contest Star Search in 1990 and was eliminated in the semi-final round. That loss decided nothing. She would go on to sell more than 100 million records worldwide, and…
- Magic JohnsonMagic Johnson told the world he had HIV from the free throw line in 1991. He was 32 and a five-time NBA champion.
- Alicia KeysAlicia Keys was fifteen years old when Columbia Records tried to win her signature with a $26,000 white baby grand piano. She took the deal. It began a long struggle over who would decide what her music sounded like. Years later she summed…
- Rami MalekRami Malek watched a single concert video, the Live Aid performance of 1985, at least 1,500 times before he played Freddie Mercury. He did it on YouTube, while preparing for a role he would later call precious beyond anything else in his…
- Kevin SpaceyLate in the 1995 thriller Se7en, Kevin Spacey walks into the story as the serial killer John Doe, and most of the audience had no idea he was coming. His name was missing from the opening credits. It was missing from the film's…
- Jennifer LopezJennifer Lopez wore a plunging green Versace silk chiffon dress to the Grammy Awards in February 2000, and a single outfit changed how people used the internet. The dress became the most popular search query in Google's history. That flood…
- Gillian AndersonGillian Anderson was arrested on her graduation night. She had broken into her own high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, hoping to glue the locks of its doors shut. Her classmates had voted her "class clown," "most bizarre girl" and "most…