See also: 1993 in music, other events of 1994, 1995 in music, 1990s in music and the list of 'years in music'.
Events
- January 29 - The Supremes' Mary Wilson is injured when her jeep hits a freeway median and flips over just outside of Los Angeles, California. Wilson's 14-year old son is killed in the accident.
- February 1 Dookie Green Day's first major label studio album debuts.
- February 7 - Blind Melon's lead singer Shannon Hoon is forced to leave the American Music Awards ceremony for his loud and disruptive behavior. Hoon is later charged with battery, assault, resisting arrest, and destroying a police station phone
- February 14 - The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia marries Deborah Koons
- February 23 - The ground breaking ceremony for the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada. Eddie Van Halen, Chris Isaak, and B.B. King attend the event.
- March 1 - Nirvana plays the band's final concert in Munich
- March 3 - In Rome, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain lapses into a coma after having an overdose of Rohypnol and champagne.
- March 5 - Grace Slick is arrested for pointing a shotgun at police in her Tiberon, California home.
- March 18 - Courtney Love calls the police fearing that her husband, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, was suicidal. Police confiscate 4 guns and 25 boxes of ammo from Cobain's home.
- March 18 - Bassist Darryl Jones replaces Bill Wyman in The Rolling Stones
- March 31 - Madonna appears on The Late Show with David Letterman, making headlines for her foul mouthed, profanity laced interview. Robin Williams later described the segment as a "battle of wits with an unarmed woman."
- April 8 - The dead body of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, is found. Cobain's death, which happened three days before, is legally declared a suicide.
- April 25 - 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 of 1993
- April 26 - The legendary Fillmore club reopens in San Francisco, California.
- April 26 - Grace Slick pleads guilty to pointing a shotgun at police officers on March 5.
- 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
- May 10 - Weezer releases their debut album. The self-titled "blue" album goes multiplatinum. Tupac Shakur begins serving 15-days in a county jail for attacking director Allen Hughes on the set of a video shoot.
- June 7 - Grace Slick is sentenced to 200 hours of community service and three month's worth of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings after a March 5 incident with police officers.
- July - The Verbier Festival is launched.
- August - 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.
- August 12 to August 14 - Woodstock '94
- 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.
- Frank Sinatra receives the Grammy Awards Lifetime Achievement award. Sinatra's acceptance speech is cut short and other artists, upset by this action, criticize the producer's decision during the show, including Billy Joel who takes extra time to perform his song, The River of Dreams, noting that he is wasting valuable air time.
- The three surviving members of The Beatles secretly reunite to record 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, reaching #2 in the UK, and evolves into the exhaustive Beatles Anthology project.
Albums released
Top hits
See also: Hot 100 No. 1 Hits of 1994
Births
Deaths
- January 6 - Harold Sumberg, violinist
- January 15 - Harry Nilsson
- January 17 - Georges Cziffra, pianist
- February 7 - Witold Lutosławski, composer
- February 24 - Dinah Shore
- March 16 - Nicolas Flagello, composer
- March 22 - Dan Hartman
- March 23 - Donald Swann, pianist and entertainer
- ca. April 5 - Kurt Cobain
- June 14 - Henry Mancini
- June 15 - Manos Hadjidakis, composer
- June 29 - Kurt Eichhorn, conductor
- July 31 - Anne Shelton, British singer
- September 2 - Roy Castle, musician and all-round entertainer
- September 13 - John Stevens, jazz musician
- September 20 - Jule Styne
- September 29 - Cheb Hasni
- October 19 - Martha Raye
- October 22 - Shlomo Carlebach, Jewish songwriter
- November 11 - Elizabeth Maconchy, composer
Awards
Charts
External Charts
1994 in music
1994 en musique | 1994年の音楽 | 1994 - muzyka | 1994 в музыке | Musikåret 1994