January:
- 6 January: Rapper Busta Rhymes is to pay $100,000 to a fan who claims that the musician assaulted him.[1]
- 4 January: A Vatican composer is to stage an opera based on Dante's Divine Comedy. The production will feature 200 performers and musicians and six projectors on a huge stage.[2]
- 1 January: Country music singer Franklin Delano "Del" Reeves has died at the age of 74. He was best known for his "girl-watching" novelty-type songs of the 1960s, and he became one of the most successful male country singers of the 1960s. [3]