Hope you all are enjoying the warm weather, I know I am! I’m currently writing this sitting out on the hub lawn with half the school, and the only thing missing is a body of water. I can’t believe this is the last passion blog post, it feels like we just started! I had so much fun researching for my other post about songs with weird backstories, so for this post I thought I’d do a little more research on fun music facts. I love discovering little random pieces of information that will probably never be useful in the future, but they’re fun to learn about. Here’s a few of the fun facts that I loved learning and hope you enjoy too!
- This one made me giggle: Britney Spears songs, specifically “Baby One More Time” and “Oops I Did It Again” are played by the British Navy when sailing around the African Coast to scare off Somali pirates! Apparently, these pirates have a strong dislike for Western music, so they will steer clear of any Britney Spears music.
- No member of the Beatles has any background in music theory. They weren’t able to read or write music, they just came up with melodies that sounded good to them. This is so crazy to me. The fact that this band was so successful and beloved, but didn’t even have any training in music is so interesting!
- When you listen to music, your entire brain is working to process it. Music isn’t just processed in the temporal lobe, it activates areas associate with movement, emotions, and creativity, which makes sense if you think about it. So listening to music activates more of your brain, and this might be why music can help people with brain diseases or injuries recall memories. This may also be why people trained in music tend to score higher on average on standardized exams.
- This one might be slightly more niche, but Beyonce’s song “Irreplacable” was written by Ne-Yo and originally for Faith Hill or another country artist. It was originally supposed to be a country song! This socks me because I’m so used to the way Beyonce has personalized it and made it such a classic empowerment song, I can’t imagine it as a country song. Her taking the song was probably for the best.
- Going along with Varnikaa’s passion blog theme, did you know in 2015, a Canadian astronaut recorded the first album ever in space! I didn’t! I’d be interested to hear if there’s any differences in the sound of the music since equipment recording capabilities might be different in space.
- This one is funny as the most recent episode of New Girl I watched was the one with Prince. Prince actually ASKED the main actress on New Girl if he could come on the show for an episode because he loved the show. This episode is so funny and has Prince being a love guru for Jess, giving her advice on her relationship. I totally recommend watching this show in general if you need a good laugh.
That’s all for my blog! Hope you learned something fun!
Sources: https://bestlifeonline.com/music-facts/
https://www.buzzfeed.com/kaylayandoli/random-music-facts
I have heard about Somali pirates before, but I never knew that the British used Britney Spears songs to keep them away! I am also shocked that none of the Beatles had any background in music theory, but I guess it makes sense that people can still be musically talented without being able to write or analyze music.
It’s so funny that the British Navy uses Britney Spears to ward of Somali Pirates, I would never have guessed! The album recorded in space would be interesting to listen to, though the astronaut probably had minimal recording devices so it probably won’t sound as good as something recorded in a music studio with all the fancy equipment.
These facts were a lot of fun to read! It’s super unrelated, but number 4 somewhat reminded me of how Mahna Mahna also experienced a drastic change before becoming famous. It’s that nonsense song that I most associate with the Muppets, but apparently its origin is from some Italian film about sex in Sweden, which feels totally unexpected for a song that feels so goofy from today’s perspective.