Scientific Formula for Tearjerker Songs

Posted by Alex in Music on February 12, 2012 at 3:47 pm

Why do some songs - take Adele's hit pop song Someone Like You, for example - bring us to tears?

Science came up with the formula why certain songs can induce strong emotions in people:

When the music suddenly breaks from its expected pattern, our sympathetic nervous system goes on high alert; our hearts race and we start to sweat. Depending on the context, we interpret this state of arousal as positive or negative, happy or sad.

If "Someone Like You" produces such intense sadness in listeners, why is it so popular? Last year, Robert Zatorre and his team of neuroscientists at McGill University reported that emotionally intense music releases dopamine in the pleasure and reward centers of the brain, similar to the effects of food, sex and drugs. This makes us feel good and motivates us to repeat the behavior.

Measuring listeners' responses, Dr. Zatorre's team found that the number of goose bumps observed correlated with the amount of dopamine released, even when the music was extremely sad. The results suggest that the more emotions a song provokes—whether depressing or uplifting—the more we crave the song.

Michaeleen Doucleff of The Wall Street Journal has more: Link

 
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Juliet’s Music Video

Posted by Miss Cellania in Baby & Kids, Music on January 19, 2012 at 9:47 am

If you wrote a song about your life, you’d include your favorite things. Australian 8-year-old Juliet made a song about how she loves her dog, Robert. The music video is charming. See it at NeatoBambino. Link

 
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The Day the LOLcats Died

Posted by Miss Cellania in Blogs & Internet, Music, Politics, Video Clips on January 18, 2012 at 6:57 am


(YouTube link)

A song from LaughPong about the SOPA and PIPA bills now before congress. While many sites have simply gone down for today in protest, Consumerist has a list of posts about the bills you can access to catch up on how the bills came about, why the internet is protesting, and what you can do. Link  -video via The Cheezburger Network

 
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The Great Mistake Lurking in “Don’t Stop Believin’’

Posted by Miss Cellania in Music on January 12, 2012 at 8:02 am

The song by Journey came out thirty years ago, but after its initial hit status, “Don’t Stop Believin’” got more mileage thanks to the TV shows The Sopranos and Glee. After all this time, I just learned a fact that everyone in Detroit knew all along.

For nearly 31 years, this flash of distracting cognitive dissonance has struck each time Steve Perry’s bright tenor lands on the iconic but geographically flawed second line: “just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit.” Because, as anyone with a tie to the Motor City knows, South Detroit doesn’t exist, either as a term of art or a geographical locale.

East Side? Sure. It’s where Eminen spent his adolescence. West?* Home to the original Motown Records. Southwest? Best Mexican food in the state. But South Detroit is as fictional as the Shire of Middle-earth.

Even songwriter Perry did not realize that there was no such place until just a couple of years ago. He finally explains how it ended up in the song. Link -via Metafilter

 
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What Are You Doing New Years Eve?

Posted by Miss Cellania in Holiday, Music, Video Clips on December 31, 2011 at 6:30 am


(YouTube link)

Zooey Deschanel posted this holiday duet she did with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The two starred together in the 2009 movie 500 Days of Summer, and have been friends even longer than that. -Thanks, Bicycle Bill!

 
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Nothing Is True: An Assassins Creed Song

Posted by Miss Cellania in Gaming, Music, Video Clips on December 23, 2011 at 6:37 am


(YouTube link)

As the description at YouTube says, “Blending was never Altair’s strong suit.” I don’t know anything about the video game Assassin’s Creed, but I still got a kick out of this funny geeky song! -Thanks, Eisenstein!

 
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Back In The Day

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animals & Pets, Music, Video Clips on December 4, 2011 at 3:52 pm


(YouTube link)

Stuffed and mounted animals sing “Back in the Day” by The Erratic Man. Besides the video, there’s a choir of singing animals that you can add your pet to! Link -Thanks, James!

 
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Doctors Today

Posted by Miss Cellania in Health, Music, Video Clips on October 6, 2011 at 8:01 am


(YouTube link)

Being a medical doctor is prestigious, but it’s not easy. Dr. Diego, Dr. Harry, and ZDoggMD sing about their work in this parody of “Tonight Tonight” by Hot Chelle Rae. Read the stories that inspired the song at ZDoggMD. Link

 
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The Muppet Show Theme Song

Posted by Miss Cellania in Music, Video Clips on August 23, 2011 at 7:21 am


(YouTube link)

By OK Go (with help from The Muppets). This is from The Green Album, available as of today. And it’s not over when the fat lady sings! -via Metafilter

 
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Rotate Your Owl for Science!

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animals & Pets, Music, Video Clips on August 5, 2011 at 5:00 am


(YouTube link)

Jonti Picking recently found footage of a scientist demonstrating head stability in an owl in 1962 and wrote a little song about it. -via Arbroath

 
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Doctor Who Future Sonic Screwdriver

Posted by Tiffany in NeatoShop Features on June 30, 2011 at 12:56 pm

Doctor Who Future Sonic Screwdriver – $25.95

Attention Doctor Who fans! Behold the Doctor Who Future Sonic Screwdriver from the NeatoShop!  This is a replica of the screwdriver of the Tenth Doctor ( as used by River Song in Series 4).  It has authentic red and blue lights, a neural relay indicator panel, and awesome sound effects.

Be sure to check out all the fantastic Doctor Who items available at the NeatoShop!

Link

 
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I Like Vegetables

Posted by Miss Cellania in Food & Drink, Music, Video Clips on May 19, 2011 at 2:50 am


(YouTube link)

The latest from Parry Gripp (previously). Even vegetables haters will like this song! -via Buzzfeed

 
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Jason Gets a Prom Date

Posted by Miss Cellania in Music, Video Clips on March 29, 2011 at 10:39 am


(YouTube link)

Jason Pitts asked Lianna to the prom during third period class last week in an romantic way that made me smile from ear to ear. The lyrics are available at the YouTube link. -via Buzzfeed

 
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Chatroulette Love Song

Posted by Miss Cellania in Music, Video Clips on March 15, 2011 at 10:20 am


(YouTube link)

Remember Chatroulette? Once in a great while, something really good can happen. I wonder how many “strangers” these guys rejected before they found Diana. -via reddit

 
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Zombie Love Song

Posted by Miss Cellania in Comics & Cartoons, Music, Video Clips on February 23, 2011 at 7:16 am


(YouTube link)

“If my heart was still beating, it would beat for you.” Enjoy this “post-apocalyptic postmortem” love song from Your Favorite Martian. -via Geeks Are Sexy

 
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Wikileaks Christmas Song 2010

Posted by Miss Cellania in Christmas, Music, Video Clips on December 14, 2010 at 12:08 pm


(YouTube link)

Wikileaks knows what you’re getting for Christmas, and they are going to spill the beans! A duet from Dan and Dan. -via mental_floss

 
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A Charming Song About Quarks

Posted by The Nag in Video Clips on November 2, 2010 at 11:20 am

(YouTube Link)

Strange Charm will tell you everything you need to know about all six flavors of the elementary particles that the world is made of.

Link

 
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The 12 Days of Christmas Quiz

Posted by Miss Cellania in Christmas, Music on October 11, 2010 at 11:11 am

You probably haven’t heard the song in at least nine months, so this is a good time to test your memory of the song “The 12 Days of Christmas.” Can you name all the gifts mentioned in the song? You have five minutes to complete the task. It took me a whole 58 seconds to type them all, because I don’t type well. Link

 
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Everything’s Better With Muppets

Posted by Miss Cellania in Music, Video Clips on September 19, 2010 at 3:06 am


(YouTube link)

You may remember Ricardo Autobahn as the creator of the awesome Golden Age of Video, or you might know him as part of the musical duo Spray, along with Jenny McLaren. Here is the video for their latest song, “Everything’s Better with Muppets.”-Thanks, Ricardo!

 
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Baby Monkey (Going Backwards On A Pig)

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animals & Pets, Music, Video Clips on September 16, 2010 at 6:09 pm


(YouTube link)

If it’s cute and it’s viral, Parry Grip will write a song about it. Here he lends his talents to the Boar-riding Monkey at the Fukuchiyama Zoo in Kyoto, Japan. -via Laughing Squid

Previously at Neatorama: The Nom Nom Song and He’s a Cat Flushing a Toilet.

 
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The Ugly Dance

Posted by Miss Cellania in Music on August 26, 2010 at 9:18 am

Watch me do the Ugly Dance! Click around at the bottom to make it look even sillier. This generator is a promotion from the Swedish band Fulkultur. It worked; I can’t get their song out of my head now. You can upload your picture and make yourself dance. Link -via the Presurfer

 
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World’s Only Xylophone Fence

Posted by Queuebot in Music, Travel, Video Clips on August 24, 2010 at 4:08 pm


[YouTube - Link]


On the Isle of Wight a man plays a happy tune using the slats on a fence.

– via frequency

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Gearhead Gal.

 
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Chicken Monkey Duck

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animals & Pets, Music, Video Clips on June 6, 2010 at 10:19 pm


(YouTube link)

The lyrics are simple, so feel free to sing along. -via Arbroath

 
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Nutrition Facts Labels for Songs

Posted by Alex in Music on December 6, 2009 at 2:45 pm

Before you download the next pop hit from iTunes, check whether it is hazardous to your health. A teen panel working with the Boston Public Health Commission has set up a "nutrition facts label" rating (like that seen on food items) for songs:

“Music, like food, can feed our brains and give us energy,” said Casey Corcoran, director of the Commission’s Start Strong Initiative. “But songs can affect our health and the health of our relationships.”

The tool, patterned after common food nutritional labels, invites consumers to become song lyric nutritionists by helping them identify relationship ingredients that make up a song. Using printed song lyrics as a guide, users can tally the number of healthy relationship themes, such as respect, equality, and trust, which are present in the song. And, like fattening calories, unhealthy relationship themes – possession, disrespect, and manipulation – are also counted. The number of times these themes are mentioned also factor into to the song’s total nutritional value. Corcoran recommends consuming lots of ‘healthy relationship’ ingredients for a balanced media diet.

The model was developed by 14 peer leaders in the Commission’s Start Strong Initiative. The teens, who range in age from 15 to 19 years old, attended a seven-week "Healthy Relationship Institute” where they were trained in teen dating violence prevention and healthy relationship promotion. They also learned to look at media critically, breaking it down to better understand the healthy or unhealthy relationship messages it may contain, such as power, control, equality, and gender roles.

“It’s important to have youth involved in this effort because teenagers are the main audience of the music,” said peer leader Shaquilla Terry, age 15 of Boston. “It’s important to actually listen to and think about the lyrics of a song and not just the beat.”

And which songs are (mentally) bad and good for you? Here are the Top 10 lists:

Top 10 Songs with UNHEALTHY Relationship Ingredients (2009)

Song Artist Score 0-50
1. Break Up (feat. Gucci Mane and Sean Garrett) Mario 45
2. Blame It (feat. T-Pain) Jamie Foxx 32
3. Paparazzi Lady Gaga 27
4. You're a Jerk New Boyz 26
5. Baby By Me 50 Cent 25
6. Best I Ever Drake 24
7. One More Drink (feat. T-Pain) Ludacris 23
8. Be On You (feat. Ne-Yo) Flo Rida 22
9. Hotel Room Service Pitbull 21.5
10. Bad Romance Lady Gaga 20

Top 10 Songs with HEALTHY Relationship Ingredients (2009)

Song Artist Score 0-50
1. One Time Justin Bieber 40
2. Miss Independent Ne-Yo 30
3. Replay Iyaz 25.5
4. Say Hay Michael Franti 25
5. Knock You Down Keri Hilson feat. Kanye West 21
6. Only You Can Love Me This Way Keith Urban 20
7. Her Diamonds Rob Thomas 19
8. I'm Yours Jason Mraz 18
9. Fallin For You Colbie Caillat 16
10. Meet Me Halfway Black Eyed PEas 15

Official press release at the BPHC: Link

 
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13 Examples of Literature in Song

Posted by Johnny Cat in Book & Literature, Music, Neatorama Exclusives on November 4, 2009 at 2:20 am

It’s no real surprise that Wikipedia has a thorough list of these, but it’s interesting to parse through the many, and find a neat collection of songs and albums that were based on, or influenced by books.  Led Zeppelin has a scatological lyric library referencing JRR Tolkien, but let’s see what else is out there.

13. Alan Parson’s Project – The album is called Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and includes interpretations of  Edgar Allen Poe’s best, like “The Raven”, “Dr. Tar and Professor Feather”, and “The Cask of Amontillado.”  Here’s the awesome “Dream Within A Dream” video.  Also by Parsons: “I, Robot” (Isaac Asimov).

12. Rivendell (Rush) – A quiet, thematic representation of the Elf version of a Bed & Breakfast. (Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, of course.)

11. 2112 (Rush) - Side one* is loosely based on Anthem by Ayn Rand.

10. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica) - Based on the classic by Ernest Hemingway.

9. The Thing That Should Not Be and The Call of Cthulu (Metallica) - These guys really let good classic fiction influence their songwriting.  We get not one, but two songs in honor of H.P. Lovecraft’s best character.  Also by Metallica: “One”, based on the book Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

8. The Small Print (Muse) - “clearly alluding to Goethe’s Faust, being sung from the point of view of the Devil to someone selling their soul to him in exchange for, presumably, musical prowess and fame…” source

7. Anthrax Loves Stephen King - As do a lot of bands like Pennywise (It).  But Anthrax named one of their best albums Among the Living after King’s character Randall Flagg in The Stand.  They also penned a song called “Skeleton in the Closet” based on King’s “Apt Pupil”.

6. Tom Sawyer (Rush) - Wow, Rush.  Even “Red Barchetta” is based on a vague book called A Nice Morning Drive by Richard S. Foster.  At least Tom Sawyer is pretty well known both as a song and a book.  Who can resist the urge to sing along when Geddy Lee croons, “The River!”

5. Tales of Brave Ulysses (Cream) - Psychedelically sums up all you need to know about all the ins and outs of Homer’s The Odyssey.  And I quote, “Tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers…”  (This was actually a lyric inspired by lyricist Martin Sharp’s travels in Ibiza.)  But the Sirens are there, so that’s cool.

4. The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen) - Based on The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  Henry Fonda and Bruce Springsteen would have had some cool conversations, I bet.

3. White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane) -Based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.  Here’s a nice rendition of that song.

YouTube Link

2. Animals (Pink Floyd) - It never actually occurred to me before, but an argument can be made that the Animals album, with it’s corrupt pigs (be they on the wing, or three different ones), dogs and sheep, political overtones…  Yeah, it’s definitely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

1. Iron Maiden (Pretty much every song of theirs, ever) - At least a heavy handful.  These Brit bad boys of metal must have had some scratched up library cards.  Their adaptations include:

On second thought, an honorable mention should be made for Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore”, as it pretty much describes the Battle of Pellennor Fields in The Return of the King.

(Iron Maiden illustration by Ado Cedric & Tio Julio.)
*For help with determining what this means, ask a grownup.

 
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Man Stacks 61 Objects On His Cat While Serenading Him

Posted by John Farrier in Animals & Pets, Music, Video Clips on October 23, 2009 at 10:59 am


(YouTube Link)

Sam Hart wrote a love song for his cat entitled “Kitty Song.” Then he sang it to his cat while stacking 61 objects on top of him. Most of them are just playing cards, but others are quite large. You can find the lyrics to the song at the YouTube link.

via Have You Seen This?

 
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Prisencolinensinainciusol

Posted by Miss Cellania in Music, Video Clips on October 23, 2009 at 10:17 am


(YouTube link)

The song is called Prisencolinensinainciusol, written by Italian artist Adriano Celentano in 1972. Recorded by Celentano and Claudia Mori in an American accent, it sounds like it should be English, but the lyrics are pure gibberish. Link -via Metafilter

 
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The Anacreontic Song

Posted by Miss Cellania in Music on August 3, 2009 at 9:25 am

A group of amateur musicians formed a club in London in the mid-1700s called the Anacreontic Society. They had day jobs as the pillars of society, but at night they would get together and present concerts. Member John Stafford Smith wrote a song that became known as the Anacreontic Song with six stanzas that became the official anthem of the group.

In all probability some drinking did occur at Society meetings, but the primary purpose of the Society (and its song) was to promote an interest in music. [The song] was commonly used as a sobriety test: If you could sing a stanza of the notoriously difficult melody and stay on key, you were sober enough for another round.

You can listen to a version of the Anacreontic Song on YouTube and hear why why this song is so remarkable. Learn more at Scribal terror. Link

 
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Gibbon Uses Slamming Door In Her Singing

Posted by Queuebot in Animals & Pets on July 16, 2009 at 1:28 pm

Tool use in apes is not unheard of, but this gibbon has taken it to a whole new level by enhancing her singing with the sound of an enclosure door slamming:

Each time her song reached its natural climax, the gibbon slammed shut the door of her enclosure, using the loud noise it made to accentuate her call.

The gibbon used the door to create a single beat rather than a rhythm.

But her behaviour is yet another example of how smaller ape species are also capable of novel tool use, says the primatologist who witnessed it.

Link – via monkeydaynews

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by MonkeyDay.

 
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What the Animals Want for Christmas

Posted by Alex in Animals & Pets, Music on December 9, 2008 at 1:45 pm

It’s 15 days to Christmas, so here’s a Christmas song, "sung" by animals from the BBC’s Breathing Places. It’s kind of creepy and cute – crute?- at the same time.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Andy!

 
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