Events in Music
Music Awards
May 5 34th Academy of Country Music Awards: Garth Brooks, Faith Hill & Tim McGraw win
- May 18 "Millennium" 3rd studio album by the Backstreet Boys is released - one of the best-selling albums of all time, over 30 million copies sold
Film Release
May 19 "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace", directed by George Lucas, starring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman and Liam Neeson, is released in cinemas
- May 29 44th Eurovision Song Contest: Charlotte Nilsson for Sweden wins singing "Take Me to Your Heaven" in Jerusalem
Birthdays in Music
Weddings in Music
- May 1 "Dixie Chicks" singer Emily Erwin (26) weds singer-songwriter Charlie Robison (34) at Lone Star State in Texas
Deaths in Music
- May 6 Dennis Riley, American composer (Masques (for wind quintet)), dies at 55
- May 10 Shel Silverstein, American writer and cartoonist (Now Here's My Plan: A Book of Futilities; The Giving Tree) and songwriter ("A Boy Named Sue"; "The Cover Of The Rolling Stone"), dies at 68
- May 17 Bruce Fairbairn, Canadian musician and record producer (Loverboy; Bon Jovi; Aerosmith) dies at 49
- May 18 Augustus Pablo, Jamaican musician (King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown), dies at 44
- May 18 Freddy Randall, English jazz trumpeter, dies at 78
- May 19 James Blades, British classical percussionist, and educator, dies at 97
- May 21 Karnail "Bugz" Pitts, American rapper (D12), killed in a picnic dispute at 21
- May 26 Paul Sacher, Swiss conductor and entrepreneur, dies at 93
