Mental_floss magazine dug up songs that made the news in the past quarter-century. They may be from a different era, and most of them aren’t particularly popular or critically acclaimed (although some are), but they all made a difference in the world one way or another. Many different ways, actually. Read the stories of each and every song at the blog. Link

At the height of the TMNT fad (circa 1994), the heroes in a half-shell put out a Christmas special, full of their own unique brand of self promotion. See how the Turtles can turn most any Christmas carol into a song about themselves, or food, and watch as their rubber lips flap to the beat. It’s a nostalgic Christmas clip for all the Ninja Turtles fans from way back!

Link

(Video Link)

Oh Mike, you went from being one of the most intimidating people in the world to being a comedic icon. Here he is further softening his image by softly singing “The Girl From Ipanema.”

Via BuzzFeed

The most expensive item on the list? Six swans a swimming that will run you $6,300. While the item measurements make sense, I just can’t fathom how eight maids a milking only costs $58 when nine ladies dancing goes for $6,294.03. I guess that’s why I’m not an economist.

Link Via Consumerist

Image Via cobalt123 [Flickr]

Whether you love or hate seeing montages in movies, there’s no denying that they are an effective story telling tool – even if they were way overused throughout the ’80s. Regardless of how you feel about montages though, it’s hard to deny that they can easily ruin an otherwise good song by creating a scene so memorable that you can’t think of anything else but the movie whenever you listen to the track. Here are a few songs that are impossible to listen to without getting montages stuck in your head.

Rue The Day has seven such songs, plus a bonus song that’s about movie montages. Link

We’ve seen plenty of minimalist movie posters, but this might be the first time we’ve come across art like this for music. Swedish designer Viktor Hertz, whose honest logos made the rounds a while back, uses simple pictography to illustrate the title of songs. (My favorite is “Life is a Rollercoaster”) Check out more in his Flickr stream. Link | via Flavorwire

Spanning from over a decade ago to this summer’s memes, Ranker has gathered together 35 catchy viral musical videos that swept the internet. You can relive the good old days of “All Your Base” and “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” and also catch up with tunes you may have missed as well. Lyrics in some songs are NSFW. Link

(Video Link)

Season 5 of The Guild started filming in April and it will most likely premiere in the next month or so. But while you wait for the next season, you can always entertain yourself with their delightful take on Bollywood entertainment.

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Bjork’s new album may sound good to her fans, but the real value is in its interactivity with the iPad. All of the songs on her album will have their own custom-designed app, that allow users to manipulate the songs on the device. The first song released revolves around the formation of crystals in the earth, as does its related app.

Link Image Via thetripwirenyc [Flickr]

Sing along with this flow chart from xkcd! I guess it shows my age when I can sing all these except Katamari Damacy. Link

Best Lyric: “Rubber duckie, joy of joys, when I squeeze you, you make noise.”

(YouTube link)

Not long after Sesame Street premiered in November 1969, staff writer Jeff Moss had a eureka moment. While soaking in his bathtub, Moss hit upon the idea for “Rubber Duckie”, Ernie’s ode to his favorite toy. The song quickly became a bathtime anthem and flew to No. 16 on the Billboard pop charts. As Sesame Street spread to more than 140 countries, the fame of “Rubber Duckie” grew with it. In 1996, Sesamstrausse’s “Quietscheentchen” (“Squeaky Little Duck”) invaded Germany, where a techno remix caught the nation by storm and helped sell 1.8 million copies worldwide. “Rubber Duckie” also popularized the toys, which are now raced in derbies and regattas around the world, and are even used by oceanographers to track sea currents.

Earworm Index: **** On a Loop

“Put Down the Duckie” by Norman Stiles & Christopher Cerf

Best Lyric: “What good are flying fingers if they’re wrapped around a duck?”

(YouTube link)

Ernie’s “Rubber Duckie” paved the way for another Sesame Street hit in 1986 with “Put Down the Duckie”. The bluesy number taught kids to do one thing at a time, or as Hoots the Owl put it, “You’ve got to put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone.” After the song was released, so many stars wanted to lend their voices to it that Sesame Street decided to produce two celebrity versions of the tune. Participants included John Candy, Pee Wee Herman, Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Jeremy Irons, Pete Seeger, Rhea Perlman, Danny DeVito, and many more.

Earworm Index: ***** Stuck for Days

“Disco Duck” by Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots

Best Lyric: “There’s no stoppin’ a duck and his beat.”

(YouTube link)

Back in 1976, Rick Dees was just another morning DJ living in a rundown Memphis apartment. But one afternoon, while perched high on a chair trying to avoid a mouse, inspiration hit. In no time, Dees had written the dance classic “Disco Duck”, about a guy at a party who’s overcome by the urge to flap his arms and quack on the dance floor. Although it took three months to convince anyone to play the song, it eventually sold more than four million copies and reached No. 1 on the pop chart. People all across the country were shaking their tail feathers. Well, except in Memphis, where rival DJs refused to play Rick’s song. Even Dees was forbidden from spinning it on his show because station managers claimed it would be a conflict of interest. Apparently, he wasn’t even allowed to talk about the song, because when he did, he promptly lost his job. But his career wasn’t derailed for long. By 1982, Rick Dees had become Southern California’s most popular morning DJ.

Earworm Index: *** Catchy

“The Ugly Duckling” by Sergei Prokofiev

Best Lyric: “Everyone wished him to be eaten by the cat.”

(YouTube link)

Sergei Prokofiev’s opus “The Ugly Duckling” was pawned amid the tumult of youthful romance. In 1914, the 23-year-old Russian composer promised his lover and librettist, Nina Meshcherskaya, a song that represented their relationship. When he suggested basing it on Hans Christian Andersen’s story of an awkward duckling, she thought he was joking. But there were many similarities between Prokofiev and an ugly duck, including his gangly figure, protuberate lips, and downy hair. Eventually she gave in and wrote the words, while he penned the music. Although the song was a hit, their love affair had no such fairy-tale ending. Soon after the piece debuted, Prokofiev and Meshcherskaya broke up under pressure from her parents.

Earworm Index: * Forgettable

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The article above, written by Megan Wilde, appeared in the Nov – Dec 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

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For its exciting, educational montage of tournament action in The Karate Kid, the movie features this song by Joe Esposito, “You’re The Best Around.”  This isn’t a music video; this was an actual scene in the movie, and it was pretty much the standard practice for musical interludes.

(YouTube Link)

Link to The 12 Songs That Define 80′s Cinema.

“Beyond the Laughing Sky”

But not all of them got included – more than 30 songs were written, including one about the Jabberwock (he ultimately got cut from the movie altogether), a song for the Caterpillar called “Dream Caravan,” a song for the Cheshire Cat called “I’m Odd,” and a song that Alice sang to open the movie called “Beyond the Laughing Sky.” Although “Dream Caravan” and “I’m Odd” never saw the light of day, you might know “Laughing Sky” by a different name – “The Second Star to the Right” from Peter Pan.

The song was cut from Alice because the song was a ballad and was a bit difficult for young Kathryn Beaumont, the voice of Alice, to sing. It was also determined that the slow song might start the movie off a little too slow, so the opening song was replaced with “In a World of My Own” instead – it’s a bit more upbeat and matched Beaumont’s range and style better.

“I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow”

The movie is really two shorts all rolled into one experience; “I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow” appears in the very first one called “Bongo.” It’s about a bear cub who works for the circus but runs away and ends up having all kinds of adventures in the wild. What does this have to do with Jiminy Cricket, you’re probably wondering? Well, he sets up the story of Bongo by strolling through a house, singing this tune. When he gets to the record player conveniently set up in the house, he puts “Bongo” on and the first short officially starts. You’re probably familiar with the second short – “Mickey and the Beanstalk.” Fun and Fancy Free actually takes its name from a line in Jiminy’s song:

“I’m a happy-go-lucky fellow
Full of fun and fancy-free
You can make the whole world seem mellow
If you take it in your stride like me.”

Don’t feel sorry for Jiminy, by the way – although he may have had to wait seven years for this particular song, his ballad from Pinocchio, “When You Wish Upon a Star,” has been one of Disney’s signature songs ever since and was ranked #7 on the American Film Institute’s “Top Movie Songs of All Time” in 2004.

Here’s Jiminy singing “I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow,” if you’re interested. The song plays throughout the opening credits, but if you want to hear him, he starts chirping around 1:47.

“The Right Side”

“Land of Sand” and “Bobbing Along on the Bottom of the Beautiful Briny Sea”

There was also a song for the magical compass sequence called “Bobbing Along on the Bottom of the Beautiful Briny Sea” that was later shortened to “The Beautiful Briny” for Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

If it seems like a lot of Mary Poppins songs were repurposed, that’s because they were – the Sherman Brothers once laughingly refused to say what else they had reworked from the movie, saying that people would think all they had done for the past 10 years was shuffle songs around.

“The Morning Report”

With all of the confusion recently on the internet about music and copyright, you may not know what’s what.  Here’s something to help you learn about how music royalties work.

Considering how much “education” about music and copyright is out there (”downloading music is stealing!” ads and the like), most people have no idea how it actually works in terms of who owns what and who should get money from what kind of use. And lately, with issues like confusion over Pandora royalties, songwriters trying to collect royalties from blogs that post YouTube videos, and even arguments that video games may constitute a public performance of music, it’s just been getting increasingly complicated.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geeksaresexy.

"…whittled like a toy whistle from the stick that is the movie."

Every time film score enthusiast Erin Murray sees a movie, she writes a song for the end credits. She’s outfitted ‘Hellboy 2′ with a soul theme, ‘Doubt’ with an organ hymn, ‘Lost in Translation’ with an Indie tune, and even made a 80s sitcom theme for Battlestar Galactica. Some of them are silly, some of them are serious, but they’re all crafted to fit with the subject. She also takes requests for films and for styles.

Her latest one is for the film ‘Coraline’.

[on the Coraline score]Bruno Coulais leads the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra and the Children’s Choir of Nice, among others, in this eerie and enchanting score. There were two things I wanted to duplicate in my piece: the choral works, and the sounds of the words. The lyrics, in French I believe, are fantastic, simply in the sounds they make. It was like a consonant rhythm section!

Link to website.

Link to song La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by rebelrebel.

Good old timey music with Eddie Thomas and Carl Scott playing uke, washboard and kazoo playing “My Ohio Home.”

Link via BoingBoing