Sci-Pop: Music For The Lab
By Hayley Birch
At The Null we’ve had our musical hats on for the last few weeks.
It started with some fairly bland science-related song titles – Chemistry by Semisonic and REM’s Electrolite – and ended with the more obscure musings of The Amateur Transplants and Isotope 217, found by delving deep into the record collections of science boppers worldwide.
Oh, alright, we had a couple of people from the US of A write in… Most of them came out of our own warped minds.
So here we present the sum total of our findings. And we call it: Sci-Pop.
The Obvious Stuff
Chemistry – Semisonic
Electrolite – REM (and of course, Man on the Moon)
Galvanise – Chemical Brothers
Paranoid Android – Radiohead
The Scientist and X & Y – Coldplay
Super Massive Black Hole – Muse
The complete works of We Are Scientists
Alchemy (the album) – Dire Straits
Champagne Supernova – Oasis
Gravity – Embrace (equally, Nature’s Law)
Plus anything by My Chemical Romance, Mercury Rev or Gene
Biology – Girls Allowed
Cosmic Girl – Jamiroquai
The Timewarp – Damien
Ray of Light – Madonna
Intergalactic – Beastie Boys (thanks to King Kurosu)
Spaceman – Babylon Zoo
Space Oddity – David Bowie
Rocket Man – Elton John
Numbers – Kraftwerk (thanks to Dug for this one)
Animal Nitrate - Suede (Ben Matthews - what a hero!)
"Chemistry" - hugely successful 1981 album by Mondo Rock (thanks Yahya Abdal-Aziz)
Anything by My Chemical Romance (Yahya: superstar!)
"Synthesis" - Cryan' Shame (Yahya Abdal-Aziz will now be known as YAA rules)
Anything by the band Tesla (YAA rules again)
Battery Acid - Six Brown Brothers (YAA rules again and again for the next five entries)
Battery Acid - Queens of the Stone Age
Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
Laser Life - The Blood Brothers (on Young Machetes)
a whole sub-genre of dance called Hi-NRG
"Starlight" - Muse (on "Black Holes and Revelations", along with "Supermassive Black Hole")
The Less Obvious Stuff
The Unstable Molecule – Isotope 217
Sun Dials – Alakaline Trio (our thanks to Audrey O, Cincinnati)
Glycerine – Bush (top marks to Yvonne Babilonia)
Einstein on the Beach – Counting Crows
Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song) – Incubus
Mercury – Low Gold
Lithium Sunset – Sting
Mechanical Animals – Marilyn Manson
The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas (Or Why Does the Sun Shine?) - They Might Be Giants (thanks to Colby Skar, Winona)
Particle Man – They Might Be Giants (shout out to The Scientician, London)
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) – Marvin Gaye (that Scientician, he’s good dammit)
Planet Earth/New Moon on Sunday – Duran Duran
Friction – Morcheeba
Warmer Climate – Snow Patrol
One More Robot/Unit 3021 – The Flaming Lips (thanks Keith Carter, Cameron)
Tom’s Diner – Suzanne Vega & DNA
Experiments in Alchemy (album) – Dog Fashion Disco
Monoculture – Soft Cell
Do the Evolution – Pearl Jam (thanks again to King Kurosu)
She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby
Places Named After Numbers – Frank Black (Dug gets credit for the last two)
NaCl – McGarrigle Sisters (thanks to Rongerstation)
Formulae - JJ72 (Ben Matthews sent in this and the next)
Split The Atom - Fionn Regan
Tenuous Links
Under Pressure – Queen
The Tide is High – Atomic Kitten
Iron Lion Zion – Bob Marley
The Birds in Your Garden – Pulp (really?)
Battlestar Scralatchtica – Incubus
Pump Up the Volume – MARSS
Inertia Creeps – Massive Attack
Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine – White Stripes (thanks to The Scientician yet again for the last two)
Toxic – Britney Spears
Nightblindness – David Gray
Volcano – Damien Rice
The Bad Touch – Bloodhound Gang (“Let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”)
Don't Ask Me - Public Image Ltd ("What you gonna do when the river runs dry? Put your drills in the mud. And death up in the sky")
Bones of an Idol - The New Pornographers
Mesopotamia - B52's (Dug put on his archaeology hat & whipped these last two out for us)
Time is on my side - Rolling Stone's tribute to Einstein? (YAA rules once more)
"What Remains Inside A Black Hole", an album rereleased as "Beyond the Black Hole" by Man or Astroman? an Atlanta-Georgia surf-rock band. (YAAY!)
More Geek than Pop
Steve’s Song – NCSE (Thanks to Siobhan Laura Casalegno. This really has to be heard to be believed:
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/stevesong.wma)
The Element Song – Tom Lehrer
Anything written by Fisher’s Z-test (they’re named after a flipping statistical test for crying out loud) or the Amateur Transplants
The First and Second Law of Thermodynamics – Flanders and Swan
The Transplant Calypso – Jeremy Taylor
But that’s not all. We know you’re squirreling away hundreds of musical science gems in your own personal collections. So get in touch. We want to make the definitive Sci-Pop list!
You can send us your favourite Sci-Pop songs using the comment box below or email [email protected]
Or join the discussion on Facebook - just search for the Unlikely Science group.
It started with some fairly bland science-related song titles – Chemistry by Semisonic and REM’s Electrolite – and ended with the more obscure musings of The Amateur Transplants and Isotope 217, found by delving deep into the record collections of science boppers worldwide.
Oh, alright, we had a couple of people from the US of A write in… Most of them came out of our own warped minds.
So here we present the sum total of our findings. And we call it: Sci-Pop.
The Obvious Stuff
Chemistry – Semisonic
Electrolite – REM (and of course, Man on the Moon)
Galvanise – Chemical Brothers
Paranoid Android – Radiohead
The Scientist and X & Y – Coldplay
Super Massive Black Hole – Muse
The complete works of We Are Scientists
Alchemy (the album) – Dire Straits
Champagne Supernova – Oasis
Gravity – Embrace (equally, Nature’s Law)
Plus anything by My Chemical Romance, Mercury Rev or Gene
Biology – Girls Allowed
Cosmic Girl – Jamiroquai
The Timewarp – Damien
Ray of Light – Madonna
Intergalactic – Beastie Boys (thanks to King Kurosu)
Spaceman – Babylon Zoo
Space Oddity – David Bowie
Rocket Man – Elton John
Numbers – Kraftwerk (thanks to Dug for this one)
Animal Nitrate - Suede (Ben Matthews - what a hero!)
"Chemistry" - hugely successful 1981 album by Mondo Rock (thanks Yahya Abdal-Aziz)
Anything by My Chemical Romance (Yahya: superstar!)
"Synthesis" - Cryan' Shame (Yahya Abdal-Aziz will now be known as YAA rules)
Anything by the band Tesla (YAA rules again)
Battery Acid - Six Brown Brothers (YAA rules again and again for the next five entries)
Battery Acid - Queens of the Stone Age
Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
Laser Life - The Blood Brothers (on Young Machetes)
a whole sub-genre of dance called Hi-NRG
"Starlight" - Muse (on "Black Holes and Revelations", along with "Supermassive Black Hole")
The Less Obvious Stuff
The Unstable Molecule – Isotope 217
Sun Dials – Alakaline Trio (our thanks to Audrey O, Cincinnati)
Glycerine – Bush (top marks to Yvonne Babilonia)
Einstein on the Beach – Counting Crows
Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song) – Incubus
Mercury – Low Gold
Lithium Sunset – Sting
Mechanical Animals – Marilyn Manson
The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas (Or Why Does the Sun Shine?) - They Might Be Giants (thanks to Colby Skar, Winona)
Particle Man – They Might Be Giants (shout out to The Scientician, London)
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) – Marvin Gaye (that Scientician, he’s good dammit)
Planet Earth/New Moon on Sunday – Duran Duran
Friction – Morcheeba
Warmer Climate – Snow Patrol
One More Robot/Unit 3021 – The Flaming Lips (thanks Keith Carter, Cameron)
Tom’s Diner – Suzanne Vega & DNA
Experiments in Alchemy (album) – Dog Fashion Disco
Monoculture – Soft Cell
Do the Evolution – Pearl Jam (thanks again to King Kurosu)
She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby
Places Named After Numbers – Frank Black (Dug gets credit for the last two)
NaCl – McGarrigle Sisters (thanks to Rongerstation)
Formulae - JJ72 (Ben Matthews sent in this and the next)
Split The Atom - Fionn Regan
Tenuous Links
Under Pressure – Queen
The Tide is High – Atomic Kitten
Iron Lion Zion – Bob Marley
The Birds in Your Garden – Pulp (really?)
Battlestar Scralatchtica – Incubus
Pump Up the Volume – MARSS
Inertia Creeps – Massive Attack
Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine – White Stripes (thanks to The Scientician yet again for the last two)
Toxic – Britney Spears
Nightblindness – David Gray
Volcano – Damien Rice
The Bad Touch – Bloodhound Gang (“Let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”)
Don't Ask Me - Public Image Ltd ("What you gonna do when the river runs dry? Put your drills in the mud. And death up in the sky")
Bones of an Idol - The New Pornographers
Mesopotamia - B52's (Dug put on his archaeology hat & whipped these last two out for us)
Time is on my side - Rolling Stone's tribute to Einstein? (YAA rules once more)
"What Remains Inside A Black Hole", an album rereleased as "Beyond the Black Hole" by Man or Astroman? an Atlanta-Georgia surf-rock band. (YAAY!)
More Geek than Pop
Steve’s Song – NCSE (Thanks to Siobhan Laura Casalegno. This really has to be heard to be believed:
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/stevesong.wma)
The Element Song – Tom Lehrer
Anything written by Fisher’s Z-test (they’re named after a flipping statistical test for crying out loud) or the Amateur Transplants
The First and Second Law of Thermodynamics – Flanders and Swan
The Transplant Calypso – Jeremy Taylor
But that’s not all. We know you’re squirreling away hundreds of musical science gems in your own personal collections. So get in touch. We want to make the definitive Sci-Pop list!
You can send us your favourite Sci-Pop songs using the comment box below or email [email protected]
Or join the discussion on Facebook - just search for the Unlikely Science group.
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