Iconic moments
Moments
Performances, broadcasts and speeches that are iconic in music history. We provide the footage and the key facts for you to dive into music history.
19 moments across 14 countries
Piaf comes back to the Olympia and sings her own epitaph
Written off after a year of illness, Édith Piaf opened at the Olympia on 29 December 1960 with a new song she had heard for the first time two months earlier: Non, je ne regrette rien.
The night Elvis put the leather back on
After seven years of bad films and no live shows, Elvis Presley sat down in a black leather suit in front of a small studio audience and reminded America why it had been frightened of him in 1956.
Forty-two minutes on a roof, and then never again
On a cold January lunchtime the Beatles climbed onto the roof of their own office at 3 Savile Row and played until the police came up the stairs. It was their last performance in public.
ABBA win Eurovision in Brighton and the world learns their name
On 6 April 1974 four Swedes in satin and platform boots sang Waterloo at the Brighton Dome, with a conductor dressed as Napoleon. Sweden had never won the contest. Pop was about to change hands.
Three nights in Kinshasa before the Rumble in the Jungle
James Brown, Celia Cruz with the Fania All Stars, Franco and Tabu Ley shared one stadium stage in September 1974. The fight they had come to warm up was postponed by six weeks; the music happened anyway.
Bob Marley joins the hands of two enemies over his head
Sixteen months after gunmen had shot him at home, Bob Marley came back to Kingston, called the prime minister and the opposition leader onto the stage during Jammin', and held their hands together in the air.
The drummer who played both Live Aids in one day
Phil Collins sang In the Air Tonight at Wembley in the afternoon, boarded Concorde, and sang it again in Philadelphia the same night, then sat behind the drums for Led Zeppelin.
Twenty minutes that turned a stadium into one voice
Queen were not the headliners at Live Aid. Freddie Mercury walked out at 6.41pm anyway and, by the end of Radio Ga Ga, 72,000 people were clapping in time with him.
A Viennese rap about Mozart tops the American charts
In the week of 29 March 1986 Rock Me Amadeus reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. No song sung in German had done it before, and none has since.
Scorpions play Lenin Stadium and come home with Wind of Change
In August 1989 a hard rock band from Hanover played to a hundred thousand Muscovites at the Moscow Music Peace Festival. The song Klaus Meine wrote on the way home became the anthem of the year the Wall fell.
Three tenors, one Roman ruin, and the night opera went pop
On the eve of the World Cup final, 7 July 1990, Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras sang together for the first time in the Baths of Caracalla. The recording became the best-selling classical album ever made.
Nirvana light the candles and play a funeral
Kurt Cobain asked for stargazer lilies and black candles on the MTV Unplugged stage. Five months later the closing song, a Lead Belly blues, was being replayed as his epitaph.
Gracias totales: Soda Stereo say goodbye at River Plate
At the end of De Música Ligera on 20 September 1997, Gustavo Cerati stopped the band, thanked the crowd, and added one word. Argentina has been quoting it ever since.
Old men from Havana take a bow at Carnegie Hall
Compay Segundo was ninety. Ibrahim Ferrer had been shining shoes three years earlier. On 1 July 1998 the Buena Vista Social Club played New York, and Wim Wenders' cameras caught them looking up at the balconies.
Aretha drops the fur coat and a president wipes his eyes
Asked to sing (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman for its co-writer Carole King, the 73-year-old Aretha Franklin sat at the piano, built the song from nothing, and let the coat fall to the floor.
BTS tell the United Nations to speak yourself
On 24 September 2018 seven young men from Seoul stood at a lectern in the UN General Assembly building, and RM spoke for seven minutes about a boy from Ilsan who learned to love himself.
A whole country dances to Jerusalema on Heritage Day
In the middle of the pandemic, South Africa's president asked the nation to learn one dance. On 24 September 2020 nurses, police, firefighters and families did it in the street, to a gospel-house song sung in isiZulu.
Daft Punk say goodbye with an eight-minute film and no words
On 22 February 2021 a video called Epilogue appeared on Daft Punk's channel. One robot walks into the desert and self-destructs; the other walks on. Twenty-eight years ended without a press release.