Michael Noël Turner

49 years ago today, Queen released 'News of the World' in the UK. October 28, 1977. Elektra followed in the US on November 1. Their sixth studio album opened with a one-two punch: We Will Rock You straight into We Are the Champions. The two songs shared a single, released on October 7 with Champions as the A-side, and it reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album peaked at No. 4 in the UK and did even better in America, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and going platinum. It was the first time a Queen album fared better in the US than at home. The cover is Frank Kelly Freas's giant robot, repainted from his October 1953 cover for Astounding Science Fiction, now holding the band. 👑 Roger Taylor and John Deacon wrote two songs each on this album. What's your favorite track on News of the World? 👑

The Jimi Hendrix Experience sharing one umbrella on a set of stone steps, Jimi in a striped suit and silk scarf with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell at his side. The trio came together in London in the autumn of 1966. Chas Chandler of the Animals had seen Jimi play in New York and brought him over to Britain in September, and within weeks Noel had switched from guitar to bass and Mitch had joined on drums. What followed was one of the fastest rises in rock. Hey Joe was a UK hit by early 1967, Are You Experienced came out that May, and Monterey Pop made Jimi a star in America that June. Axis: Bold as Love followed in December 1967 and Electric Ladyland in October 1968. The pace wore on all three of them, and Noel played his last show with the Experience in June 1969. All three are gone now, Jimi in 1970, Noel in 2003 and Mitch in 2008, but those three albums still sound like nothing else. 🎸 The Experience made three studio albums in under three years. Do you own all three? 🎸

Paul McCartney strolling across the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios in London on July 23, 2018, almost 49 years after the Beatles walked it for the cover of Abbey Road. On a scorching day in the middle of the UK's record breaking summer, word got out that something was happening, and fans and tourists crowded the pavement with their phones out as Paul made his way across, wearing sandals just as he had in 1969. He was on his way inside to play a secret show for a small audience in Studio Two, where the Beatles recorded so much of their music, mixing Beatles classics with four new songs from his upcoming album Egypt Station. His daughter Mary filmed the crossing and both of them shared it online that day. The original cover was shot on August 8, 1969, by photographer Iain Macmillan, and in December 2010 the crossing became the first zebra crossing ever given Grade II listed status in England. Egypt Station came out on September 7, 2018, and became Paul's first No. 1 album in the United States since Tug of War in 1982, and his first ever to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. 🪲 The Abbey Road zebra crossing was the first zebra crossing ever to be given listed status in England. Have you ever walked across it? 🪲