Resource: This Day in Music
You gotta love when a website delivers simple, concise content on a daily basis about the best subject in the world - music. This Day in Music is exactly that. Every day the site lists 3 main topics in popular music history based on the date:
What Was the Number One Song on the Day You Were Born?
On This Day in Popular Music History
What Famous Musician was Born on this Day
When the MusicFirst Classroom first launched back in August of 2014, we used to pull in content from this website as part of the Teacher and Student Dashboard. While we stopped doing that back in 2016 when we redesigned the dashboard, I’ve always wanted to figure out a way to get it back. I’ll keep trying. In the meantime, this is a GREAT website to bookmark and share with your students.
I don’t care how old you are, it’s a very cool piece of trivia to find out what the number one song was on the day you were born. For me, it was Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Diana Ross (try to figure out my birthday!). Once you enter in your birthday, you’ll see the number one songs in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany. This is a fun activity for both you and your students - even their parents!
On This Day in Music is also very cool and a PERFECT tool for students who are interested in finding out what important events in popular music history happened on the same day that you access the site - or any day if you use their search tool. I used to use this site WAY back when I had my 7th graders create “This Week in Music History” podcasts back in 2006-07.
Born On This Day is also really fun. Students can find out what famous musicians were born on he same day as they were, as well as what important events happened. For me, I found out that Miles Davis passed away on my birthday, and I share the same birthday as Ben E. King of Stand By Me fame. I am 100% certain that students will find this section of the site really cool. They will love to find out what happened on their birthdays too.
You can sign up to receive daily emails from This Day in Music - totally free. I highly recommend checking out this site with your students especially if you incorporate popular music into your curriculum. With so few educator friendly online resources available for teaching popular music, this is a must.
So what happened on your birthday? Can you figure out my birthday? Have fun!