1992 in music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1992.
Specific locations
Specific genres
- 1992 in country music
- 1992 in heavy metal music
- 1992 in hip-hop
- 1992 in jazz
- 1992 in Latin music
- 1992 in progressive rock
Events
January–February
- January 11
- * Nirvana's Nevermind album goes to No. 1 in the US Billboard 200 chart, establishing the widespread popularity of the Grunge movement of the 1990s.
- * Paul Simon is the first major artist to tour South Africa after the end of the United Nations cultural boycott.
- January 16 – Mick Jagger attends the Hollywood première of his new movie, Freejack, at Mann's Chinese Theatre.
- January 25 – The inaugural Big Day Out festival takes place in Sydney, Australia, headlined by Violent Femmes and Nirvana.
- January 28 – The annual American Music Awards are held in Los Angeles.
- February 5 – New Kids on the Block interrupt their tour to perform on The Arsenio Hall Show in response to rumors that the group lip-synchs its concerts.
- February 16 – Slavic music is featured at the Oulu Music Festival, with concerts and opera productions in Oulu, Finland, until February 26.
- February 18 – Vince Neil leaves Mötley Crüe after 11 years as the band's lead singer, to spend more time on his career as a racing car driver.
- February 24
- * Nirvana's Kurt Cobain marries Hole's Courtney Love.
- * The U.S. Postal Service unveils two potential designs for its proposed Elvis Presley postage stamp for fans to vote on. One design is of a young, 1950s Elvis, and the other is of a much older, 1970s Elvis. The young Elvis wins the vote, and the stamp is issued the following January.
- February 25
- * Six major record companies reach an agreement to phase out the longbox form of compact disc packaging by April 1993, due to complaints that the packaging is environmentally wasteful.
- * The 34th Annual Grammy Awards are presented in New York, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. Natalie Cole's Unforgettable... with Love wins Album of the Year, while her "virtual duet" cover of "Unforgettable" with her late father, Nat King Cole, wins both Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Marc Cohn wins Best New Artist.
March–April
- March 10 – At the 1992 Soul Train Music Awards, Prince wins the "Heritage" award for lifetime achievement.
- March 14 – Farm Aid Five takes place in Irving, Texas, USA, hosted by Willie Nelson. Artists performing at the event include John Mellencamp, Neil Young and Paul Simon. Approximately 40,000 people attend the event.
- March 16 – Mariah Carey performs at MTV Unplugged, shows critics her 5-octave range, and gets rave reviews.
- March 24 – A judge in Chicago, Illinois, USA, approves cash rebates of up to US$3 to anyone proving they bought Milli-Vanilli recordings prior to the beginning of the lip synching scandal on November 27, 1990.
- April 1 – Billy Idol, on trial for punching a woman in the face, pleads no contest. Idol is fined and ordered to make public service announcements against alcohol and drug abuse.
- April 20 – The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert takes place at Wembley Stadium in London, England. All proceeds go to AIDS research.
- April 24 – David Bowie marries fashion model Iman.
- April 30 – In Los Angeles, California, USA, Madonna's bustier is stolen from a display in Frederick's of Hollywood. A US$1,000 reward is offered for its return.
May–June
- May 6
- * The first Europäisches Jugendchorfestival, is held in Basel, Switzerland. Organizers decide to make it a triennial event.
- * Rob Halford announces he is leaving Judas Priest.
- * Selena releases her album Entre A Mi Mundo which contains her first No. 1 hit, "Como La Flor".
- May 7 – John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers leaves the band prior to the publication of a Rolling Stone magazine cover featuring them; he has to be digitally edited out of the photo. Frusciante returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1998.
- May 9 – The 1992 Eurovision Song Contest, held at Malmö Isstadion in Malmö, Sweden, is won by Ireland's Linda Martin with the song "Why Me?", notably written by 1980 and 1987 winner Johnny Logan. At 41 years old, Martin becomes, and remains, the oldest woman to win the contest.
- May 11 – A. R. Rahman's debut film Roja is released. The soundtrack is regarded as a milestone that changed the face of Tamil film music and subsequently contemporary Indian music. Time magazine's film critic, Richard Corliss, stated in 2005 that the "astonishing debut work parades Rahman's gift for alchemizing outside influences until they are totally Tamil, totally Rahman," naming it one of the magazine's "10 Best Soundtracks" of all time.
- June 5 – The Sata Häme Accordion Festival takes place until June 14 in Ikaalinen, Finland.
- June 27
- * Michael Jackson starts the Dangerous World Tour, supporting his Dangerous album in Munich, Germany.
- * Guitarist Stefanie Sargent of up-and-coming punk rock band 7 Year Bitch dies of asphyxiation after returning home from a party in which she had drunk alcohol and taken a small amount of heroin. She was 24.
- June 29 – The Northern Accordion Festival takes place in Tornio-Haaparanta, Finland, until July 5.
July–August
- July 4
- *The BudaFest Summer Opera and Ballet Festival is launched in Budapest, Hungary.
- *Mark Heard suffers a heart attack while performing at the Cornerstone Festival in Illinois, USA. Heard goes to hospital immediately after finishing his set, but dies two weeks after being discharged in August.
- July 10 – Seinäjoki Tango Festival begins, running to July 12.
- July 11 – "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses enters the world record books when it becomes the longest single, at 8 minutes, 57 seconds, to reach the US Top 20. The single's video has a budget of over US$1.5 million, becoming the most expensive at the time.
- July 12 – Opening of the Chamber-Music Festival of Kuhmo, Finland.
- July 18 – Whitney Houston marries Bobby Brown.
- July 28 – Ice-T announces that the controversial track "Cop Killer" is being pulled from Body Count's self-titled album.
- August 2
- * Rozalla becomes the first artist from Zimbabwe to chart on the US Billboard magazine chart.
- * Former Beatle George Harrison tells Billboard magazine that he recently discovered that he was born on February 24, and not February 25 as he had thought for most of his life.
- * Haitian military authorities ban the playing of RAM's single "Fèy"; first performed at the Port-au-Prince Carnival in February, the song was widely interpreted as an anthem of support for exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
- * American pop-punk band Blink-182 form in the suburbs of San Diego, but are known as Blink until 1995.
- August 3 – Lahti Organ Festival begins, lasting until August 9.
- August 5 – Jeff Porcaro, arguably the most highly regarded studio drummer in rock from the mid-'70s to the early '90s, dies aged 38 of a heart attack.
- August 8 – During the Guns N' Roses/Metallica Stadium Tour, Metallica frontman James Hetfield is burned by a pyrotechnics blast during a concert at Montreal's Olympic Stadium, forcing the group to cancel the second hour of the show. Co-headliners Guns N' Roses take the stage, but walk off early with Axl Rose complaining of throat problems. The abbreviated show causes angry fans to riot in the streets of Montreal. The tour resumed on August 25, but with a guitar technician replacing Hetfield on guitar for the remainder of the tour.
- August 14 – Opening of the Sibelius-Festival in Loviisa, Finland.
- August 18 – Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, is born.
- August 20 – Opening of the Helsinki Festival, with the theme: Music of the Baltics until September 6.
- August 22 - Six-year-old Qa'id Walker-Teal is shot dead by a stray bullet during a confrontation between rapper Tupac Shakur's entourage and a rival group at an outdoor festival in Marin City, California. Shakur is sued for wrongful death three years later.
September–October
- September 17 – Frank Zappa, in his final professional public appearance, conducts the Ensemble Modern at the Frankfurt Festival in Germany. Zappa, who is seriously ill with prostate cancer, receives a 20-minute ovation.
- October 3 – Sinéad O'Connor stirs up controversy when she rips up a picture of the Pope on the US television show, Saturday Night Live.
- October 16 – A massive Bob Dylan tribute concert is held at Madison Square Garden in New York. John Cougar Mellencamp, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash and Tracy Chapman are among the many performers, but much attention becomes focused on Sinéad O'Connor, who is loudly booed by much of the audience in response to the Saturday Night Live incident two weeks earlier.
- October 20 – Singer-songwriter Madonna releases her fifth studio album, Erotica, which became one of her most controversial albums to date due to overtly sexual content.
- October 31
- *"End of the Road" by Boyz II Men posts a 12th consecutive week at No. 1 in the US charts, ending a 36-year record previously held by Elvis Presley. Boyz II Men's record was broken on March 6, 1993, by Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You".
- *McTeague, an opera based on the Progressive Era-novel by Frank Norris, premieres at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
November–December
- November 3 – The rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine releases their debut album.
- November 9 – Australian-born singer Kylie Minogue ends her working relationship with UK songwriters and record producers Stock Aitken Waterman and the record label PWL.
- November 15
- * Megan Jasper of Sub Pop creates the grunge speak hoax, tricking The New York Times into printing an article on supposed slang used in the grunge scene in Seattle, USA.
- * Ozzy Osbourne plays the final concert of his "retirement" tour at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, California. He is joined on stage by his three former Black Sabbath bandmates for a reunion performance. Black Sabbath opened the show with Rob Halford as lead vocalist, filling in for Ronnie James Dio who had left the band days earlier.
- * The Jacksons: An American Dream, a two-part miniseries based on the Jackson family, premieres on ABC.
- November 17 – The soundtrack album of "The Bodyguard", Whitney Houston's debut film, is released. The album went on to be certified 18 times platinum by the RIAA and sell 45 million copies worldwide. To date the album is still the best selling soundtrack of all time and also one of the best selling albums of all time.
- November 22 – Manchester-based post-punk and electronic music label Factory Records declares bankruptcy. The label had been placed in dire financial straits following the spending of most of their funds by Happy Mondays during the recording of their album Yes Please!, which would end up a commercial failure. Additionally, plans for a buyout from London Records folded when it was discovered that none of Factory's artists were actually signed onto the label; most of these artists, most notably New Order, would end up signing onto London Records anyhow following Factory's foreclosure.
- December 3 – Bill Wyman announces he is quitting The Rolling Stones.
- December 5 – The 21st OTI Festival, held at the Teatro Principal in Valencia, Spain, is won by the song "A dónde voy sin ti", written by, and performed by representing Spain.
- December 31
- * Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau announces his retirement from the stage to an audience at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
- * The twenty-first annual New Year's Rockin' Eve special airs on ABC, with appearances by TLC, Bell Biv DeVoe, Slaughter, Jon Secada, Village People and Barry Manilow.
Also in 1992
- David Isberg quits Opeth from his vocalist position. Current guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt fills his position.Vibe, a new magazine focusing on R&B and hip-hop music, launches with a special Fall preview issue.
- The first Oregon Jamboree country music festival is held in Sweet Home, Oregon.
- The MP3 file format is developed as part of a video compression standard.
Bands formed
- ''See Musical groups established in 1992''
Bands disbanded
- ''See Musical groups disestablished in 1992''
Bands reformed
- ''See Musical groups reestablished in 1992''
Albums released
Release date unknown
Adam 'n' Eve – Gavin FridayAlice in Wonderland No. 4 – Randy GreifAn Evening With The Allman Brothers Band, First Set – Allman Brothers BandThe Basics of Life – 4HimBig Bang – MagdallanBlack Ticket Day – Ed KuepperBrer Rabbit and Boss Lion – Dr. JohnCamera Camera – Nazia and ZohebCenter Of The Universe – Giant SandCrooked Line – Nils LofgrenDestination Paradise – Fischer-ZDon Dada – Super CatFireboy – Grant McLennanGoin' Back to Dixie – John HartfordGroovus Maximus – Electric BoysI, Jonathan – Jonathan RichmanI'll Find You There – The KryInfamous Angel – Iris DementIn Search of Manny – Luscious JacksonIrène Schweizer & Pierre Favre – Irène Schweizer and Pierre FavreLast Train – Holy SoldierLe Jardin de Heavenly – HeavenlyLetters To A Dream – Louis TillettLittle Village – Little VillageLusis – MortalLysol – MelvinsMercy – Bryan DuncanMy Friend Louis – Andrew CyrilleNot Fade Away – Nitty Gritty Dirt BandNotes from the Underground – Medeski Martin & WoodPick It Up – Hokus Pick ManouverPray for Rain – PFRPray Naked – The 77sRemember – Crystal LewisScenic Routes – Lost DogsShort Man's Room – Joe HenrySix-Pack of Love – Peter CaseSnakes in the Playground - BrideTales of Wonder - White HeartThrough the Forest – Mad at the WorldToo Much Fun - Green On RedTrue Believer – Irma ThomasValhalla Avenue – The Fatima Mansions- XX Years Live – Rez Band
- Saddle Up – First Arsch
Biggest hit singles
The following songs achieved the highest chart positions in the charts of 1992.| # | Artist | Title | Year | Country | Chart Entries |
| 1 | Whitney Houston | I Will Always Love You | 1992 |  Top ten best albums of the yearAll albums have been named albums of the year for their hits in the charts.
Classical music
Opera
Musical theaterCrazy for You – Broadway production opened at the Shubert Theatre and ran for 1622 performancesFalsettos – Broadway production opened at the John Golden Theatre and ran for 487 performances Guys and Dolls – Broadway revivalJelly's Last Jam – Broadway production opened at the Virginia Theatre and ran for 569 performancesThe Most Happy Fella – Broadway revivalMusical filmsAladdin – Animated feature film by Walt Disney Animation StudiosDeep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the CrossroadsCelibidache – You Don't Do Anything, You Just Let It Evolve Chnam Oun 16KhiladiThe Muppet Christmas Carol[Musketeers Twenty Years After|]Pure CountryRoja – Tamil Indian film by Mani RatnamUn cœur en hiver, featuring music by Maurice RavelSoundtracksAladdin Academy Award winner for Best Song and Best Film ScoreBatman Returns – score Danny ElfmanThe Bodyguard – Whitney HoustonBoomerang – Boyz II Men, Tribe Called Quest, P.M. Dawn, BabyfaceBram Stoker's DraculaConeheads – Paul Simon, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili PeppersCool World – David Bowie, The Cult, Ministry, Moby, Brian EnoDeep Cover – Dr. Dre & Snoop DoggFar and Away – score by John WilliamsJuice – Naughty by Nature, Too Short, EPMD, Cypress HillThe Last of the Mohicans – score by Trevor Jones and Randy EdelmanLethal Weapon 3 – Eric Clapton, StingMalcolm X – Arrested Development (group), Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray CharlesMambo Kings – Los Lobos, Linda Ronstadt, Tito PuenteMedicine Man – score by Jerry GoldsmithMo' Money – Color Me Badd, Public Enemy, Bell Biv DeVoe, Janet JacksonRush – Eric ClaptonSingles – Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins, Jimi Hendrix, SoundgardenSister Act – Etta James, Whoopi Goldberg, C+C Music FactorySouth Central – Scarface, Cameo (band), Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.Toys – Tori Amos, Enya, Frankie Goes to HollywoodWayne's World – Queen, Jimi Hendrix, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alice Cooper, Black SabbathBirths
Deaths
Awards
Charts
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