This Day In Music History; May 24th

Kim K and Kanye get married, Duke Ellington passes away.

I’m usually writing about this day in sports history but, there hasn’t been a ton of great events for me to write about these past few days so I thought I’d set my sights to music and on this day, May 24th, there were two significant events.

The first being the marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. In 2014, the two celebrities read their vows at Fort di Belvedere in Florence, Italy. Now seven years later it looks as if the power couple is going to split up.

While that is upsetting, Kim definitely had an influence on his music from 2014 on. Ye dropped The Life of Pablo in 2016 which was a banger of an album. It had iconic songs like Father Stretch My Hands and No More Parties in LA but many songs talking about Kanyes feelings.

Real Friends talks about how the more famous he got, the less friends he had really supporting him vs the people that were mooching off of him for money. In FML he sings “I been waitin’ for a minute, for my lady, so I cant jeopardize that for one of these hoes”. Kanye could possibly be referring to waiting for a woman to come into his life, maybe before he met Kim.

In 2018 Kanye released Ye. This album gave a deep dive into many of his mental health battles with bipolar disorder and depression. In Ghost Town, Kanye writes “I put my hand on the stove, to see if I still bleed”. He feels numb from depression and just wants to feel again.

This same year, the Kanye, Kid Cudi collaboration that the people needed came out, KIDS SEE GHOSTS and in 2019 he dropped Jesus is King, his gospel album.

It is disappointing to see Kim K and Kanye in the middle of a separation but, lots of great music came from their marriage. Happy anniversary!

The second significant event on this day in music history is the passing of jazz artist Duke Ellington. In 1974, Ellington died of complications from pneumonia and lung cancer. His funeral was attended by 12,000 people.

Now I’m not a Duke Ellington fan and his only contribution to todays culture is being a ghost in the Netflix series Big Mouth.

In the hilarious, animated series about puberty, Ellington lives in Nick Birches attic and whenever Nick needs advice, he escapes to the attic and gets whacky anecdotes from the Jazz legend.

Outside of that, I don’t know any of his music and that goes for everyone in my age demographic. We just know him from Big Mouth.