Fair warning....this is most likely the nerdiest music-related blog post you'll ever read. I'm quite certain about that. Normally, I leave work at work, and my ability to do so is one of the things I pride myself on. However, when the wife and kid are out of town....this is what you get. A music blog post about chemicals.
You read that correctly. Chemicals. It's my job, so it's time to start mixing business with pleasure...if you know what I mean. Honestly, it's ok if you don't because I'm not even certain I know what I mean. So here we go...my top songs named after chemicals/elements/and alloys! WOOHOO!
Ahh....this is the song from a bygone day in which Radiohead played primarily guitars on their albums. It's also the track that inspired this great endeavor. You can find it on the Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP released a few months after their OK Computer album (my favorite album of all time). Polyethylene is a plastic made by combining a crapload of ethene molecules together. So take the image above and multiply it by a couple of thousand. Add them all together and what do you get?? Plastic. Add some titanium dioxide (my current job) to it and what do you get?? White plastic. It just got real up in here.
Elements....seriously, where would we be without them? Lithium was probably my favorite song off the Nevermind album. It or "In Bloom". We're splitting hairs here if you force me to choose. Lithium...what can I tell you about it? Well, its got three protons and it's reactive as hell. It's a metal, but you can cut it with a knife.....if you dare! It'll probably catch fire if it touches water though, so don't rinse that lithium-cutting knife in the sink. Lithium compounds are used to treat schizophrenia. It's also used a source of tritium....which I'm pretty sure was the energy source everyone was after in the Spider-Man 2 movie....except that it was colored gold....and shaped like a soccer ball....and I think James Franco kept it in a safe in his office.
Again with the Radiohead. I knew there was a reason I liked this group so much. Melatonin....or as you most likely know it, N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine (holla back now, IUPAC!!). It's one of Radiohead's softer numbers and as Radiohead songs go....very meh.
4. The Smashing Pumpkins - The Crying Tree of Mercury (buy)
I'm not sure what Senor Corgan was getting at by naming a song "The Crying Tree of Mercury", nor do I feel he grasped the severity of what he was proposing. Mercury is like CCCRRRAAAZZZYYYYY toxic. A tree that cries Mercury would literally be terrible. There wouldn't be enough thiols in the world to clean up that mess.
This one's kind of a stretch. Chrome is basically a thin layer of chromium (cleverly named, huh?) placed on the surface of some metals. Close enough. Seriously, though....we should all be thankful that chrome is in our lives. Can you imagine what rims would look like on tricked-out Hondas without Chrome? Shudder....
6. Beastie Boys - Brass Monkey (buy)
Alloys. This monkey is made of copper and zinc. What proportions? Who knows...the Beastie Boys don't exactly state the copper-to-zinc ratio. It's a wonder they ever made it in the music industry.
RR
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