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

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

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

(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

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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)

Top 10 Songs with HEALTHY Relationship Ingredients (2009)

Official press release at the BPHC: Link

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:

• Seventh Son, by Orson Scott Card (on the 7th Son of a 7th Son album, including all songs)
• Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
• Flight of Icarus (Mythology)
• The Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Alan Sillitoe)
• Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlen)
• To Tame a Land (Dune, Frank Herbert)
• The Trooper (The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Tennyson)
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
• Murders in the Rue Morgue (Edgar Allen Poe)

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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!

Cat lovers will love this song and video. Those who don’t like it, beware…Sparta will bite you! Enjoy! LINK

Nick Patera sings “Part of Your World” with an awesome woman’s voice! I am sure anyone who listens to his singing with their eyes closed would have think that the singer was a female.

Link: YouTube