Where are all the STEM songs hiding?

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SUMMARY

The forum discussion centers on the scarcity of STEM-themed songs in popular music, with participants noting that most songs focus on emotional themes, particularly romantic relationships. Examples of STEM songs mentioned include "The Galaxy Song" by Eric Idle and "Put the Lime in the Coconut" by Harry Nilsson, highlighting the rarity of logical or scientific content in mainstream music. The conversation also touches on the emotional appeal of songs, suggesting that STEM topics often lack the emotional resonance that drives popular music.

PREREQUISITES
  • Understanding of STEM concepts and their cultural representation in music.
  • Familiarity with popular music genres and their thematic trends.
  • Knowledge of notable STEM-related songs and their artists.
  • Awareness of the emotional versus logical dichotomy in songwriting.
NEXT STEPS
  • Research the impact of emotional themes in popular music on audience engagement.
  • Explore the history of novelty songs and their role in representing STEM topics.
  • Investigate contemporary artists who incorporate STEM themes into their music.
  • Analyze the lyrical content of songs like "The Galaxy Song" for STEM-related themes.
USEFUL FOR

Musicians, educators, and fans of STEM who are interested in the intersection of science and music, as well as anyone looking to explore the cultural significance of STEM representation in popular media.

  • #31
Dr. Courtney said:
STEM songs are rare because they don't move one's romantic interest toward the place you would like them to go.

Why is STEM poetry so rare?

It fails to speak to the heart. It fails to move the will.
Just to add there is loads of comedic STEM poetry, clever and witty rather than melancholy, serene, beautiful and other adjectives i don't use that much at work.
 
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  • #32
BWV said:
There is this


What a sad song!
Never heard this before, yeah the STEM is well spotted!
 
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  • #33
Remember Rocket 88, expresses or emphasises the great desirable quality of a car - something for transportation technology. Engineering - the T and the E part in STEM.
 
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  • #34
symbolipoint said:
Remember Rocket 88, expresses or emphasises the great desirable quality of a car - something for transportation technology. Engineering - the T and the E part in STEM.
I have up voted for effort although I would say tenuous still. There are more obvious examples and Hawkwind have provided 3 tracks from just one album. Even the album cover is a STEM lab.

This is a study in interstellar cryogenic travel and human cloning
 
  • #35
BWV said:
There is this
-- Commander Cody Link --
An especially good pick, considering band member John Tichy a.k.a. Professor, Mechanical Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering at RPI

https://faculty.rpi.edu/node/36055

"John Tichy is also listed in the Who's Who in Rock & Roll (1996) and the Rolling Stone Encyclopaedia of Rock & Roll (1998) for his work as singer, songwriter and guitarist in the 1960s and 70s with Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. "
 
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  • #36
Always wonder if people view 'songs' as synonymous with music, or really are just referring to songs

 
  • #37
BWV said:
Always wonder if people view 'songs' as synonymous with music, or really are just referring to songs
Person has the choice to specify when he wants to be more clear.
 
  • #38
Dr. Courtney said:
STEM songs are rare because they don't move one's romantic interest toward the place you would like them to go.

Why is STEM poetry so rare?

It fails to speak to the heart. It fails to move the will.
Not everyone is romatically inclined. Or, to put it more bluntly:

 
  • #39
My favorite bit of M poetry

Love and Tensor Algebra
By S Lem

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Bools or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
the product o four scalars is defines!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!
 
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  • #40
Dr. Courtney said:
STEM songs are rare because they don't move one's romantic interest toward the place you would like them to go.

I agree. . . .✔I think this might be an exception, though not romantically. . . it moves me toward a place I like to be.

In other words, it makes me feel good, emotionally. . . . :smile:

.
 
  • #41
BWV said:
My favorite bit of M poetry

Love and Tensor Algebra
By S Lem

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Bools or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
the product o four scalars is defines!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!
A little shorter but this Limerick gets to the point.

'There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was faster than light
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night'
 
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  • #42
Shorter still:
"Last night I met upon the stair
a little man who was not there.
He was not there again today.
Oh how I wish he'd go away!"
 
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  • #43
PeroK said:
Not to forget:


I recently read an account/argument that this song was about spaceships and time travel and not about the obvious-seeming beginning of ww2. But who knows, May was, after all, an astrophysicist ( I think he recently completed the phd thesis he had abandoned when he joined the band in the 60s).
 
  • #44
WWGD said:
I recently read an account/argument that this song was about spaceships and not the obvious-seeming beginning of ww2. But who knows, May was, after all, an astrophysicist ( I think he recently completed the phd thesis he had abandoned when he joined the band in the 60s).

It's definitely about that. Here's a quote from Brian May:

Brian May – 1983, BBC Radio One:
It’s a science fiction story. It’s the story about someone who goes away and leaves his family and because of the time dilation effect, when you go away, the people on Earth have aged a lot more than he has when he comes home. He’s aged a year and they’ve aged 100 years so, instead of coming back to his wife, he comes back to his daughter and he can see his wife in his daughter, a strange story.
 
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  • #45
I regret missing a chance a few years back to have a book signed by Brian May, stupidly because I did not want to buy his book, which was really not that expensive after all. Not many chances to come into contact with greatness.
 
  • #46
Klystron said:
Shorter still:
Yes shorter but not quite STEM
 
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  • #47
Klystron said:
Shorter still:

Lol. . .That reminds me of Plato's beard . . .

"Historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor."Your "Shorter still" poem is "Antigonish" . . . authored by William Hughes Mearns .It IS a classic. . . :cool:

It's close enough. . . :oldeyes: . :oldtongue:
pinball1970 said:
Yes shorter but not quite STEM

:oldsmile:

 
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  • #48
I think ultimately the issue is that art, artistic experiences are supposed to be pre-rational; experienced initially through the senses, maybe rationally afterwards. A STEM song would require an initial rational assessment/evaluation and undetstanding before processing.
 
  • #49
And fairly recently

 
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  • #50
Dr. Courtney said:
STEM songs are rare because they don't move one's romantic interest toward the place you would like them to go.

Why is STEM poetry so rare?

It fails to speak to the heart. It fails to move the will.

It isn't so much that STEM songs don't speak to the heart or move the will -- any subject can be made to do this or elicit some other emotional reaction, depending on the skills of the artist -- as much as most poets or musicians do not have a strong enough knowledge or background in STEM to create meaningful or intelligent compositions on STEM subjects.
 
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  • #51
But to clarify the question: do you mean the theme itself is STEM- based or that the lyrics themselves address technical points? Or something else?
 
  • #52
Since we are on the topic of STEM songs, Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked on the popular YouTube show First We Feast by host Sean Evans on rap lyrics with references or comments on science.

(Note: Skip ahead on the video to 11:56.)

 
  • #53
WWGD said:
But to clarify the question: do you mean the theme itself is STEM- based or that the lyrics themselves address technical points? Or something else?

I can't speak to the OP, but I would say both (STEM-based themes in songs, lyrics addressing technical points).
 
  • #54
Mose bandies biological words about, but even if they aren't technically accurate (science has advanced since the early 1960s ;) his observations remain valid.


Coaxing Tesla coils to musicality has to count for something.


Not the group I was looking for (a quartet, if distant memory serves), but this fellow fits the bill, and has a dozen or so other tunes to choose from.
 
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  • #55
Nice. The last guy does a lot of cleaver (auto-capella (with himself)) science songs.
 
  • #56
Vanadium 50 said:
And...


This is clever but I would have preferred them in order or at least by group or something. This version has alkali metals with halogens, inert gases with heavy metals. A bit of a Mish mash
 
  • #57
Asymptotic said:
Mose bandies biological words about, but even if they aren't technically accurate (science has advanced since the early 1960s ;) his observations remain valid.

Love the piano on this!
 
  • #58
BillTre said:
Nice. The last guy does a lot of cleaver (auto-capella (with himself)) science songs.
He does all the parts? A good range!
 
  • #59
I have found another one about space travel

This is a time when players could play and singers could sing live.



Time travel and relativity (I think)

 
  • #60
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