If you were asked what kind of subject matter you think of when you hear the term “popular music,” you’d probably respond with something emotion-based, such as “romance,” “love,” “friendship,” or “family.” In other words, most of us wouldn’t generally associate something as pragmatic and factual as science as encompassing the necessary artistic elements to be a songwriter’s muse. But alas, we at Tower Fasteners have indeed put together a list of 10 songs that cover a variety of scientific topics, from the periodic table, to space travel, biology, electricity, the big bang theory, and more. And being that technology could not exist without its parent Science, we thought we’d go ahead and utilize some in order to make this blog interactive and bring you a correlating song playlist that you can actually link to! So have a listen, and hey—why not share it with your favorite S.T.E.M. student? It’s more than likely they’ll need a fun (yet, still educational) break from all of that studying!
Listen to the The Ultimate S.T.E.M. Playlist: https://spoti.fi/2KEb1GS
Set to the tune of Major-General’s Song(from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The Pirates of Penzance),Lehrer gives us an alliterative recital of all of the chemical elements of the Periodic Table that were known at the time of his writing in 1959. In fact, the final rhyming couplet: “These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, And there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered”is notable for its delivery being deliberately sung in a parody of a Boston accent so that the two underlined words rhymed. This was indeed a witty artistic decision on Lehrer’s part given that he, a Harvard Mathematics lecturer, did not normally speak with that accent himself. Over the years, Lehrer’s endearingly educational tune would find its way into pop culture, having now been referenced and/or performed in episodes of several TV shows including NCIS, The Big Bang Theory, Gilmore Girls,and most recently, Better Call Saul.
This folk-inspired original, both penned and recorded by David Bowie, was released in 1969 during a period of heightened interest in space travel and exploration. As it happens, the song was inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (which had been released just a year earlier), inasmuch as it tells the tale of a fictional astronaut’s launch into space. While open to interpretation, the lyric in which the song’s protagonist, Major Tom, looks down from the universe and laments “Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do” suggests a hopelessness about life on Earth—so much so, in fact, that he directs Ground Control to “tell my wife I love her very much” and then proceeds to live out the rest of his existence in the preferred stillness of space. Deep.
This Elton John hit was something of an informal follow-up to Bowie’s Space Oddity, which had been released three years earlier. Like its predecessor, Rocket Manwas released at a time when space exploration was on everybody’s minds and lips. However, unlike Space Oddity, John’s tale tells the story of an astronaut who greatly misses the planet he leaves behind. ‘Rocket Man’ struggles with the uniquely-felt realization that while others perceive him to be a hero, in actuality he’s just a man whose chosen line of work leaves him feeling isolated and lonely. Still, while the song’s overriding theme may be a bit of a downer, that didn’t stop it from soaring up the charts to No. 2 in the UK and No. 6 in the US.
Electrical metaphors run fully charged in this rockabilly ditty, in which the lead singer of The Polecats professes “A sweet romance is not for me, I need electricity.” The lyrics cover it all from diodes, to oscillators, to power cords, and more. And although rife with double entendre, that didn’t stop advertisers from using the song in the TV trailers for the 2008 Disney Pixar film WALL-E, proving that, as it did for The Polecats twenty-seven years later, lightning can strike twice.
Secret, secret – we’ve got a secret! Okay, perhaps it’s not a well-kept one, but not everyone knows that this hit single for Styx originated as part of an experimental rock opera concept album titled Kilroy Was Here. The song tells part of the story of Kilroy, a man sent to a futuristic prison for being a “rock and roll misfit.” At the facility are Robotos –a model of robots that perform menial tasks. Kilroy eventually escapes by overpowering a Roboto prison guard and hiding inside of its emptied-out metal shell. The song explores the theme that technology isn’t always the savior we’d like to think it is, particularly as it leads to dehumanization. For putting in the effort to make such a commentary, we’d like to say Domo Arigato.
At first listen, this 1986 hit for Timbuk3 appears to be a congratulatory anthem for graduating Nuclear Science students about to embark on bright futures, with‘things going great’for them ‘and only getting better.’However, singer/songwriter Pat MacDonald revealed that the meaning of the song was actually quite grim. Written at the height of the Cold War, MacDonald has hinted that the titular ‘bright future’was in fact due to impending nuclear holocaust, and that the ‘job waiting’after graduation signified the demand for nuclear scientists to facilitate such an event. Whoa… the 80s had some dark days, man. Could that be why Corey Hart only wore his sunglasses at night?
They Might Be Giants is an alternative/modern rock band known for being uniquely experimental with an absurdist song style that typically involves often amusing lyrics. Such is the case with Mammal,in which singer John Linnell sings a collection of scientific facts about, you guessed it… mammals. This song covers it all, “from the embryonic whale to the monkey with no tail.” According to Linnell, most of the factual information presented was taken straight out of the encyclopedia. (For you Youngins, those were a series of huge tomes filled with information about any and every subject imaginable. And if we didn’t have our own set of encyclopedias at home, we had to make our way to the library. Uphill. In the snow. H-hang on, has anyone seen my cane?)
There was probably no musical artist in the mid-1990’s known to be more lyrically abstract than Counting Crows’ lead singer/songwriter, Adam Duritz. And it’s no different with Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman). In this catchy tune, Duritz likens Albert Einstein (an esteemed theoretical physicist), to an Eggman (an implied Humpty Dumpty-esque character). But… why? In an interview with Songfacts, Duritz had admitted that the song’s meaning touches on the thought-provoking question of “what if you’re someone who’s a brilliant mathematician like Albert Einstein, or anyone doing creative work on something that seems so clean and brilliant, and then it turns out to be an atomic bomb. It’s your idea, which is so amazing and graceful in and of itself, but it turns into something not so great.” The takeaway: Possessing an innovative mind comes with a catch—an inherent vulnerability and fragility beyond one’s own control. Not unlike that of “an Eggman, fallen off the wall,who’ll never be together again.”
What do photosynthesis, spontaneous combustion, fusion, gravity, and non-stick frying pans all have in common? They’re each a subject of scientific study referenced in Stuck to You, an achingly sweet, yet humorous, acoustic ditty by American folk-singer/songwriter, Josh Ritter. Who can’t relate to the longing contained within a lyric like, “I could have been a planetician, studied rockets for a living,Would have worked out better in the end.But to get more specific, I'd break every law of physics,To bring you back to me again.” Although, the one area of physics we would NOT dare fiddle with? The physics of sound, of course—how else would we be able to enjoy fun little tunes like this one!
We couldn’t leave the opening theme to the hit CBS sitcom off of this list. Written by Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies at the personal request of the show’s co-creators, Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, the song regales the listener with the story of evolution going back as far as “fourteen billion years ago.” While the show’s version lasts only about twenty seconds, the full version contains four additional stanzas which cover fascinating, quickly-spouted tidbits of information about time, dinosaur extinction, the separation of land into continents, and a prediction about the fate of the Earth’s future (and ours, along with it). Whether we’re talking about “religion or astronomy, Descartes or Deuteronomy, music and mythology, Einstein and astrology” one thing is for sure… “it all started with the big bang! ( Hey!)”
