Topic
Rooms in which everyone had stopped speaking and the tape kept rolling — recorded, released, certified and, in several cases, litigated.
12 stories published.
They met as children on a television show, dated through the peak of both careers, and broke up in 2002. What followed — a single, a video and two decades of coverage — is one of the clearest documented cases of a breakup being turned into product.
6 min read
John Lennon told the others he was leaving in September 1969 and was persuaded to say nothing. Paul McCartney announced it six months later in a press release he wrote himself — and then sued the other three to get out.
7 min read
Two marriages inside one group, both ended within three years of each other, and the biggest song of the period was sung by an ex-wife to lyrics written by her ex-husband. The documented sequence.
5 min read
Tina Turner walked out of a Dallas hotel on 1 July 1976 hours before a show. In the divorce she gave up the royalties, the houses and the recording contracts, and kept the two words she performed under.
6 min read
Cher filed for separation in 1974, married Gregg Allman four days after her divorce was final, and then returned to CBS to co-host a variety show with her ex-husband for another two years.
5 min read
Kanye West took the microphone from a nineteen-year-old on live television in September 2009. What followed — an apology, a reconciliation, a song, a recorded phone call and a leak — is one of the most litigated pop-culture disputes of the century.
5 min read
Madonna and Sean Penn married in August 1985 in front of a press corps in helicopters. The divorce file, the withdrawn 1987 petition and a sworn 2015 declaration are the only parts of this marriage that are documented.
4 min read
Slash walked out of Guns N' Roses in October 1996. Axl Rose kept the name, spent fourteen years making one album, and turned down his own Hall of Fame induction. The reunion tour grossed over half a billion dollars.
4 min read
Two couples separated inside one studio while a third marriage collapsed outside it. Nobody quit. The songs are addressed, by name, to the people standing on the other side of the glass.
7 min read
Oasis ended backstage at a French festival on 22 August 2009, minutes before the band were due on stage. The brothers argued in public for fifteen years — then posted the identical announcement on the same morning.
7 min read
Amsterdam, March 1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono married in Gibraltar, checked into the Hilton, and let reporters into the room every day for a week. Within eighteen months the Beatles were in the High Court.
4 min read
A joint statement in June 2022, a custody agreement signed in a Barcelona courtroom, and a track that broke streaming records within twenty-four hours. What is on the record about the most-streamed break-up of the decade.
4 min read
The weekly frame
Our mailing list opens shortly. Nothing is stored yet.