I need some examples.
I can think of two:
“Saved the Best for Last,” when Vanessa Williams sings “sometimes the sun goes 'round the moon.”
And Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound,” which says, “birds go flying at the speed of sound,” and also mentions that “planets are moving at the speed of light.”
What else?
Scientific accuracy? From songs? What’re you on?
“Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars…”
"Would you like to swing on a star?’
“Came the dawn
She was gone
18 billion miles away…” (“Eight Foot Two” by Allan Sherman)
And Zager and Evans’ “In the Year 2525” gets special mention for being bad science, bad science fiction, and a loathsome song
That said, I think Christine Lavin does something or other that’s accurate with Sedna. You can order a booklet on Sedna that she put together from her website!
Granted that it’s probably not what they had in mind, but I think they’re correct. The universe flying apart and all that.
Well a sort of scientific-historical example… that Sinatra song with the lyrics ‘They all laughed at Christopher Columbus, when he said the world was round’. No they bloody didn’t.
“Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket…”
The next line would be:
“…watch it burn a hole in your leg…”
Not Sedna, but her song Planet X is about the debate over whether Pluto should even be considered a planet. And it is accurate.
Amoeba Hop, not so much.
“The Martian Hop.”
“We have just discovered an important note from space. The Martians want to throw a dance for all the human race.”
No reliable researcher will admit to reception of any such transmission, and there is significant doubt as to even the existence of a creature on that planet capable of hosting such an event.
And they don’t even have trees on Mars. No trees, no paper. No paper, no streamers. No streamers, let’s face it: No party. Reports indicate there would similar obstacles to procuring punch.
“Doing the neutron dance!”
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.
“Dancing on the Cieling”
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
Because actually, it isn’t.
And it ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell, and there’s no one there to raise them if you did.
Joan Baez in Diamonds and Rust:
“And here I sit, hand on the telephone
hearing the voice I’d known
a couple of light years ago
headed straight for a fall”
Apparently she’d been dating this guy from Alpha Centauri…
“They took a donor’s body cell and fertilized a human egg and so I say,
‘I think I’m a clone now’”
And the later verse implying that Marconi invented radio (“They told Marconi, wireless was a phony”) ignores the fact that he didn’t – Tesla did.
Although, since Marconi’s patent stood until 1943, George and Ira may have been at least legally correct when they wrote “They All Laughed” (I’m not sure what year it was).
I’ve always been a little partial to one of Jefferson Starship’s more obscure tracks, “Freedom at Point Zero”, because it starts with the lyrics:
I like to move at the speed of light.
Albert says I can’t but I can.
She’s using “light year” like it’s a measure of time? That’s pretty bad. Kind of a Star Wars-ish mistake.
But Marconi made up for it by playing the mambo. Listen to the radio. Don’t you remember? We built this city on rock and roll.
Garth Brooks believes that the thunder rolls then the lightning strikes,
Every hymn, gospel and “Christian rock” song ever written.