On the first day of Christmas, RCIScience gave to me….

The best gift you never knew you needed: a science-themed music playlist! Songs about science! Songs by scientists! Songs about science by scientists! Plus a bunch more whose links are tangential at best... Whether you’re working from home or back in the lab, take a break from those holiday tunes (we promise Mariah and Michael won’t mind…) and get psyched about science!

1. Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
An absolute belter straight out of the gate from quantum physicist and musician @pramodh.yapa! We hosted a fantastic panel all about Black Holes pre-pandemic - check it out: Black Holes: From Speculative to Spectacular

2. The Scientist - Coldplay
Need we say more?!

3. Lab Rules - AsapSCIENCE
If you were lucky enough to attend one of our Science is a Drag events, you’ll recall this was Champagna’s absolute scream of an opening number! It remains some of AsapScience’s best work 👏👏👏

4. Long Division - Death Cab for Cutie
A song about an unhappy relationship, using math as an extended metaphor

“And they carried on like long division
And it was clear with every page
That they were further away from a solution that would play
Without a remain remain remain remainder”

5. Big Bang Theory Theme - Barenaked Ladies
Not much to say here other than thanks for the top Canadian science content 👍

6. The Math of Love Triangles from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
We learned more about triangles and triangle puns from this 3 minute song than we did in 15 years of school… A+, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend writers.

7. Virus of the Mind - Heather Nova
A throwback to 2002, this song is basically the anthem for the war on misinformation, whichever side of the line you find yourself on! (Also, a huge relief to know we’re not the only ones hanging out with the dog at parties...)

In Heather’s words, this song is about, “When you’re infected by other people's thoughts and opinions on how you should be living your life, rather than your own instinctive, intuitive vision.”

8. Big Ole Geeks - Raven the Science Maven
An empowerment anthem for women in STEM and a celebration of science and rap culture. This track slaps.

9. Stuck to You - Josh Ritter
The son of neuroscientists, Josh Ritter was initially enrolled in Oberlin College, Ohio’s neuroscience program before embarking on his illustrious career as a singer-songwriter and expert storyteller. Stuck to You is a charming love song for his mother, explaining the science behind everyday occurrences.

10. Rocket Man (I think it’s going to be a long, long time) - Elton John
The story of an astronaut who greatly misses the planet he leaves behind. An anthem for anyone unable to return home this holiday season :(

11. Earth Song - Michael Jackson
It’s a song about climate change. From the 90s. What are we doing?!

12. space girl - Frances Forever
A dreamy ode to a queer intergalactic crush. Also a TikTok craze? Love. 🌈

13. Chemistry - Semisonic
Experiments and earworms from the early ‘00s!

14. Genetics - Meghan Trainor feat. The Pussycat Dolls
An unapologetic dance track about flaunting the body we’ve been blessed with thanks to genetics. 💃

15. She Blinded Me With Science - Thomas Dolby
A hit from 1982 about a mad scientist who falls in love with his laboratory assistant. Maybe stop doing that, academia…

16. Chemistry - Arcade Fire
A thinly veiled excuse for a bop.

17. The Bad Touch - Bloodhound Gang
Often referred to as ‘the Discovery Channel song’ or ‘the Mammals song’, this is a NSFW 90s throwback. Consider yourselves warned!

18. A.T.C.G. - Raven the Science Maven
More empowering STEM magic from Dr. Raven Baxter.

19. Chain Reaction - Diana Ross
Obviously about PCR 😂

20. Electric Feel - MGMT
There are a lot of different interpretations for this song, the most common being about sex or drugs. Our favourite is the suggestion that it’s about Renewable Energy, specifically, wind farms: "all along the eastern shore, put your circuits in the sea...plug it in, change the world" 😅

21. I Am A Paleontologist - They Might Be Giants (for kids)
A song about dinosaurs and paleontologists - pure joy! Rawr 🦕

22. Space Oddity - David Bowie
The tale of a fictional astronaut’s launch into space, inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. While open to interpretation, the lyric in which the song’s protagonist, Major Tom, looks down from the universe and laments, “Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do,” suggests a hopelessness about life on Earth. So much so that he directs Ground Control to, “tell my wife I love her very much,” and then proceeds to live out the rest of his existence in the preferred stillness of space.

23. Pavlov’s Bell - Aimee Mann
Sticking with the travel theme, the title is a reference to psychologist Ivan Pavlov’s famous experiments proving that a stimulus linked to expectation could spur physiological reactions, ie., a dog associating the sound of a bell with being fed would eventually begin to salivate at the sound of the bell by itself.

24. Grapevine Fires - Death Cab for Cutie
It’s a song about wildfires. More on that in this year’s issue of RCIScience Magazine and in our past events.

25. Science the S*** Out of This - Harry Gregson-Williams
Two minutes of focused concentration and problem solving à la Matt Damon in The Martian, LET’S GOOOOOOOOO!!!

26. NaCl (Sodium Chloride) - Kate & Anna McGariggle featuring Chaim Tannenbaum
The story of the romantic courtship of a chlorine and sodium atom, who marry and become sodium chloride. Cute!

27. Lost in Space - Aimee Mann
Another one for the astronomers!

28. SUPERPOSITION - Daniel Caesar featuring John Mayer
Daniel Caesar uses science as a lens to explore the impossibly complicated and chaotic nature of his life and the relationships within it. It introduces the idea of superposition, a phenomenon where two distinct waves (sound, water, etc.) cross paths and either make one bigger wave, cancel each other out, or often some combination of both.

29. Imitosis - Andrew Bird
A song about loneliness with loads of great scientific references woven in.

30. Cloudbusting - Kate Bush
This track is inspired by the Austrian radical scientist Wilhelm Reich. Having been a respected psychoanalyst, Reich’s psychosexual experiments became increasingly eccentric, and in the 1950s he invented a ‘cloudbuster’, a machine designed to induce rain. Bush tells the story from the perspective of Reich’s son, Peter, recalling his father’s eventual arrest.

31. The Temptation of Adam - Josh Ritter
One of Ritter’s more famous storytelling songs, The Temptation of Adam describes a love affair between two scientists inside an underground atomic weapons silo, peppered with nuclear physics-related wordplay.

32. Superposition - Young the Giant
This love song uses ideas from physics to talk about the incredible pull we feel to those we love, and the sense of fate and inexplicable compulsion that brings us together.

33. The Antidote - Simple Plan
Science as a cure! Jk, it’s obviously another love song.

34. Science vs Romance - Rilo Kiley
The immortal contradiction of the head and the heart.

35. Scientist Studies - Death Cab for Cutie
A song about the first year of college.

36. Drops of Jupiter - Train
Chartering a woman’s journey through outer space after ascending into the atmosphere, dancing among the stars and planets while the narrator, on Earth, is only able to imagine what sort of adventure she’s having.

37. Higgs Boson Blues - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
While this track requires its own syllabus to unpink, Cave explains he was, “interested in the popular press's take on [the] experiment to find the 'God particle'. There was this idea that if they discovered the Higgs Boson that it would negate the existence of God."

38. Phytoplankton - Elizabeth Mitchell
A cute story about a “little phytoplankton living in the ocean” 💙

39. The Molecular Shape of You - A Capella Science
Chemistry + Ed Sheeran = Clever Earworm

40. We Are All Made of Stars - Moby
The first single from Moby's 2002 album, 18, was inspired by quantum physics: "On a basic quantum level, all the matter in the universe is essentially made up of stardust," Moby explains. Works for us.

41. Video Killed The Radio Star - The Buggles
This track from 1979 beautifully encapsulates the mixed emotions that many have regarding technological advances. In this case, the increased popularity of television as a form of information and entertainment ultimately ‘killed’ the radio industry. Fun fact: the video for the song was the first one ever to play on MTV! We’re looking forward to the follow up ‘Digital Streaming Killed Broadcast TV’...

42. I Can Change - LCD Soundsystem
Ah, behavioural science 101. The back and forth of good intentions and bad implementations, bringing forward the challenges wrought by the planning fallacy. Attempts to pre-commit to change may or may not hold. Or so our therapists suggest.

43. Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell
A perfect example of loss framing.

44. Just One of the Guys - Jenny Lewis
It’s not not about being a womxn in a male dominated STEM field…

45. The Middle - Jimmy Eat World
We can only assume this is an ode to completing a PhD.

46. Race for the Prize - The Flaming Lips
A song about the quest to find a cure for cancer.

47. Make a Circuit With Me - The Polecats
A perfect balance of infectious guitar work, danceable beat and cheesy lyrics about love through electricity. Or a love song for robots. Either way, we’re in. 🤖

48. Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman) - The Counting Crows
In an interview with Songfacts, frontman Adam Duritz suggested, "It sort of takes the idea of, what if you're someone who's a brilliant mathematician like Albert Einstein or any of us doing creative work on something that seems so clean and brilliant, and then it turns out to be an atomic bomb. It's your idea, which is so amazing and graceful in and of itself, but it turns into something not so great." We wonder if Mark Zuckerberg has heard this song lately? 🤔

49. Style (Science Acapella Parody) - AsapSCIENCE
Swiftie Science, yes please!

“Unlike most trends, Science is logical and never ends”

Sing it louder for the people at the back!

50. Starlight (Taylor’s Version) - Taylor Swift
Yeah, hands up, you caught us. Taylor’s probably not on the same wavelength as Moby on this one. We’ll admit this inclusion is tangential at best but we wanted to joyfully dance our way outta here! 💃 💃 💃

What do you think? What’s your favourite track? What did we miss? What’s on your STEM playlist?! Let us know in the comments below! 👇🎧