Science Class of Rock

For my inaugural Sb post, a little bit of culture.

My first reaction to the National Review's bizarre list of the top 50 allegedly conservative rock and roll songs was incredulity, so misunderstood and misrepresented were the selections that made the list. But after trying to come up with my own list of examples celebrating science and reason, I realized why it was necessary to play fast and loose with the qualifying criteria.

Not that I would stoop that low, of course. For the past week, I've been scouring our not insubstantial CD collection and web-based lyric databases for signs that at least some musicians respect the fruits of the Enlightenment. I must report that, so far, the pickings are slim. What follows is what I've come up with to date.

First, however, a few notes. I restricted my search parameters to songs that have enjoyed at least some degree of popularity. They didn't need to be instantly recognizable, but obcure works by artists that no one has ever heard of didn't make the cut.

Second, children's ditties and educational songs don't count, either. There's plenty of stuff out there in that category, including songs that specifically sing the praises of the scientific method. See here if you've got some offspring who could use some encouragement in that department.

And in keeping with my disdain for arbitrary rankings, the list is in no particular order

I begin the list with the lyrical inspiration for this blog, "Crosseyed and Painless," from the Talking Heads' Remain in Light, (in)arguably one of the monumental recording of the late 20th century. There's a reference to "the island of doubt -- it's a like a taste of medicine." But it's a list of the shortcoming of facts that really make me think David Byrne appreciates the scientific method more than most: "Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late / Facts all come with points of view / Facts don't do what I want them to..."

Next is a classic from George Gershwin. It's an example of a surprisingly common denunciation of dogma and faith. There are actually many more celebrations of atheism out there than I anticipated. I'm more interested in celebrations of reason, so most didn't qualify. Still, "Ain't Necessarily So" is so well-known, that I think it deserves a mention. "It ain't necessarily so / The things that you're liable / To read in the Bible / It ain't necessarily so."

If Gershwin's atheism qualifies, I suppose I should also include at least one of Rush's tunes: "I will choose a path that's clear / I will choose Free Will."

I came across a couple of great little tunes you might recognize that demonstrate at least an appreciation of some basic science, even if they don't explicitly champion the field. "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer, consists almost entirely of a recitation of the periodic table: "There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium / and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium..."

In a similar vein, Kate and Anna McGarrigle have this tribute to "Sodium Chloride (NaCl): "Just a little atom of chlorine / Valence minus one / Swimming thru the sea, digging the scene / Just having fun / She's not worried about the shape or size / Of her outside shell / It's fun to ionize / Just a little atom of Cl / With an unfilled shell."

From chemistry to paleontology now, with "Walking in your footsteps." Just because The Police have dabbled in mysticism and synchronicity, that's no reason to write Sting and boys off the map of reason: "Hey there mighty brontosaurus / Don't you have a message for us? / You thought your rule would always last / There were no lessons in your past / You were built three stories high / They say you would not hurt a fly / If we explode the atom bomb / Would they say that we were dumb?"

Here's something from the ultimate champions of cold rationality, Kraftwerk. Lyrics aren't really their strong suit, but I figure I had to include "Radioactivity," if for no other reason than it pays homage to a recipient of the Nobel Prize for physics: "Radioactivity / It's in the air for you and me / Radioactivity / Discovered by Madame Curie."

More subtle and sophisticated is, believe it or not, Billy Joel. His "Shades of Grey" may not be among his more popular products, but it demonstrates a well-developed appreciation of the value of uncertainty: "Shades of gray are all that I find / when I look to the enemy lines / Black and white was so easy for me / but shades of gray are the colors I see / Now with the wisdom of years / I try to reason things out / and the only people I fear / are those who never have doubts."

At this point, I'm running out of obvious material. I ran through the Laurie Anderson catalog, thinking her love of technology might prove fruitful. All I could find was "Walking and falling" a monolog from Big Science: "You're walking / And you don't always realize it / but you're always falling. / With each step you fall forward slightly. / And then catch yourself from falling / Over and over, you're falling / And then catching yourself from falling / And this is how you can be walking / and falling / at the same time." That's biomechanics, right?

And finally, and little reluctantly, there's the back-handed compliment paid to the subject by Mr. Thomas Dolby: "She blinded me with science! / And failed me in biology / And now she's making love to me / The spheres're in commotion / The elements in harmony / She blinded me with science."

Please feel free to post your own favorites. I'd love to see the list grow beyond a mere 11 items.