Interesting Facts

Between the 8th and 14th January 2016, Justin Bieber became the first artist ever to hold the top 3 spots in the UK charts at the same time. (He took the number 1 spot with 'Love Yourself', at 2 it was 'Sorry' and 3 was 'What Do You Mean'. I'm sorry?  What do you mean he took all 3 spots? I guess that's what happens when you love yourself.)

David Bowie's album Blackstar has reached number 1 in the American album charts. It is his first number 1 album in the US, and the first posthumous number one album in the US since Michael Jackson's This Is It soundtrack, which topped the chart in November 2009. (He had managed to reach number 2 spot with his 2013 album, The Next Day. Meanwhile, in the UK, 19 of his albums entered the UK album charts last week, after fans sought out his classic hits.

According to data provided by Shazam, and analysed by the BBC, Adele's hit song 'Hello' was the most-searched for song globally. (As a result, Lionel Richie got a boost, as his track has the same name and ended up being looked searched for in Angola and Iran.) Source

Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? We call that kind of song an earworm (borrowed from the German word ‘ohrwurm'). Well according to research from the University of Reading chewing gum can get it out. (Their study found that people who chewed gum after hearing catchy songs thought less often about the song and it reduced the amount the song went round and round in their head. The study, "Want to block earworms from conscious awareness? B(u)y gum!" was published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. I wonder who financed the research?) Source

Australia has been invited to take part in the Eurovision song contest, as part of the competition’s 60th anniversary celebrations. (The Australian contestant, is yet to be chosen, but they will fight it out in the semi-final, and hopefully the final, which this year is being held in Vienna, Austria. It must be down to continental drift.)

In 2014 the second-most searched for topic on the video-sharing website YouTube, was  ' Minecraft ', just behind 'Music'. (The top search terms were:- Music Minecraft Movies Frozen Drake Beyonce Pewdiepie Happy Eminem Pewdiepie?  Really?)

A study conducted by funeral directors Co-operative Funeralcare, found the 1979 Life of Brian song, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, has overtaken Frank Sinatra's My Way as the preferred choice of music at funerals. (Playing popular songs is taking over from more traditional, and sombre music. The top 30 popular songs are:- 30. ACDC - Highway to Hell 29. Ben E King - Stand by Me 28. Terry Jacks - Seasons in the Sun 27. John Lennon - Imagine 26. Queen - Another One Bites The Dust / Don't Stop Me Now 25. Simple Minds - Don’t You Forget About Me 24. Louis Armstrong - What a Wonderful World 23. Tina Turner - Simply the Best 22. Jenn Bostic - Jealous of the Angels 21. Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven 20. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here 19. Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2U 18. Cast of the Wizard of Oz - Ding-dong! The Witch is Dead 17. Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah 16. Eric Clapton - Tears in Heaven 15. Puff Daddy - I’ll Be Missing You 14. Vera Ly...

According to a study carried out by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, UK schoolchildren are taking up pop instruments due to the influence of reality TV shows like the X Factor. (In 1999 the instrument plaed by most kids was the recorder, in 2014 it is the electric keyboard. 1999 Recorder – 19% Keyboard – 9% Piano – 8% Acoustic guitar – 5% Drums – 4% Violin – 2% Flute – 2% Electric guitar – 1% Percussion – 1% Bass guitar – 0% 2014 Keyboard – 30% Piano – 28% Recorder – 28% Acoustic guitar – 20% Drums – 14% Electric guitar – 13% Violin – 12% Flute – 7% Percussion – 6% Bass guitar – 5% I would think that with synthesisers, the electric keyboard encompasses all the instruments.) 

Warren Herbert Frost, is the inventor of the first recognizable kazoo, a musical instrument that modifies the player's voice using a vibrating membrane. (He named the new musical instrument kazoo in his patent #270,543 issued on January 9, 1883. The modern, kazoo, which was also the first metal kazoo, was patented by George D. Smith of New York, on May 27, 1902. It sounds just like Apple and Samsung. Kazoo wars!) Source: Wikipedia

The average CD (compact disc) can hold 74 minutes’ worth of recorded sound. (What's interesting about this is why they chose 74 minutes.  Why not 60 or 120?  Well allegedly, when CDs were developed by Philips and Sony in the 70s, one of the developers,  Norio Ohga,  decided that a single CD should be able to contain the longest recorded version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which is 74 minutes long. Luckily they didn't decide on the symphony Victory at Sea, by Richard Rodgers, it is 13 hours long!)

British pop group Slade earn £500,000.00 in royalties every year from their festive hit "Merry Xmas Everybody". (The top Christmas earners for 2013 were approximately:- Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody - £512,000 The Pogues - Fairytale of New York - £386,270 Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas - £347,615 Wham - Last Christmas - £301,620 Cliff Richard - Mistletoe & Wine - £98,400 Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas? - £78,030 Shakin Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone - £53,834 The Pretenders - 2000 Miles - £45,344 East 17 - Stay Another Day - £30,220 Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry - £13,260 I need a Christmas number 1!)

The British navy is using Britney Spears' music to scare off Somali pirates. (According to news reports, Britney's hits, including Oops! I Did It Again and  Baby One More Time , are being employed in an attempt to scare off pirates along the east coast of Africa. One naval officer is reported as having said:- "Her songs were chosen by the security team because they thought the pirates would hate them most. These guys can't stand western culture or music." But my favourite quote comes from Steven Jones, of the Security Association for the Maritime Industry: "Pirates will go to any lengths to avoid or try to overcome the music. I’d imagine using Justin Bieber would be against the Geneva Convention." Perhaps nothing else – not machine guns, not big, beefy security personnel – is quite as intimidating as the sound of Ms Spears singing "Ooh baby baby".  What would scare you away?) Sources: Daily Mail  | The Guardian

According to research by the company, Big Yellow Self Storage, most people stash away garden equipment in their shed. (But some men, 7%, set up the shed with a snooker or pool table and 22% store musical instruments, 18% keep exercise equipment there, 17% use it to store bicycles and bike accessories, 13% set up a model railway, 10% have fishing gear,  and many stash comics, books and old gadgets away, and a massive 29% say the shed is where they keep their music collection. If I told hubby to store his music collection in a shed, it would be divorce time.)

A piece of music called Weightless, by Marconi Union is meant to be the most relaxing music ever written. (It's meant to be so relaxing that you're not supposed to drive whilst listening to it. It's meant to be more relaxing than a massage, a walk or a cup of tea. Seemingly the band worked with sound therapists on how to make the most effective use of harmonies, rhythms and bass lines, and according to a study commissioned by bubble bath and shower gel firm Radox Spa, listening to it results in a slowing of the heart rate, reduced blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. It sounds perfect for the post Christmas / New Year period, or maybe I should have listened to it before Christmas. You can listen to it on Soundcloud . But if you suffer from low blood pressure, maybe you shouldn't.)

The singles chart in the UK began in 1952, which makes it 60 years old. (To commemorate this, an A list of records that have sold more than a million copies has been compiled by the Official Charts Company , a total of 123 records. The top seller is Elton John's double A-side Something About The Way You Look Tonight/Candle in the Wind, which was released in the aftermath of the 1997 death of Diana, Princess of Wales and sold 4.9m copies in the UK. 123rd place and just scraping past the million mark, is When We Collide by X-Factor winner of two years ago Matt Cardle. You can find the full list here .)

Ageing rockers The Rolling Stones have announced their first live shows in five years - but the tickets will set you back at least £106. (The best seats cost around £406, and fans who want to stand in the "tongue pit" near the front of the stage will have to purchase a VIP hospitality package costing £1,140. £106 - is more than the band themselves were paid when they performed their first gig 50 years ago.  I guess this isn't so much a "must see before I die" as a "'must see them before they die",)

According to research from mobile network O2, smartphones are hardly ever used to make a phone call. (Most people use their smartphone for surfing the web, checking social networks or playing games. The research found that the average smartphone owner spends more than two hours each day using the device. Here's a breakdown of what they use it for. Browsing the internet - 25 minutes  Social networking - 17 minutes Playing games - 13 minutes  Listening to music - 16 minutes Making phone calls - 11 minutes Text messaging - 10 minutes Taking photographs - 3 minutes Even though people only spend three minutes a day taking photographs, photography was the most popular thing to use a smartphone for, 74 per cent said that they had taken photos with their handset. For me all the above is true apart from playing games and texting. I have never played a game on my Motorola Droid, and I send about 10 texts a year. In fact my smartphone gets about 30 minutes use a day, I prefer...

According to figures from the British Phonographic Industry, digital music sales now exceed sales of CDs and records. (Digital sales have risen to £86.5 million/year, whilst revenue from physical formats, such as CD and vinyl, slumped by 15%, and now represents just £69.3 million. BTW - for the younger generation, CDs are small, round, flat shiny things that play music, and records (aka vinyl) are large, round, flat, black things that play music too.)

Sales of games in the UK beat film and TV for the first time in 2011. (According to the Electronic Retailers Association (ERA) video game sales hit £1.93 billion in 2011, the biggest ever in the industry's history. By comparison DVDs and other video formats created just £1.80 billion in revenues and music just £1.07 billion. I love the way they say "just" - you know just a couple of billion.) Source

An appoggiatura, is a musical device, a note or tone that is not normally part of a chord but appears in a melody that precedes an essential melodic note or tone. It clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. (Twenty years ago, British psychologist John Sloboda conducted a simple experiment. He asked music lovers to identify passages of songs that reliably set off a physical reaction, such as tears or goose bumps. Participants identified 20 tear-triggering passages, and when Dr. Sloboda analyzed their properties, a trend emerged: 18 contained an appoggiatura. According to, Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia this musical dissonance generates tension in the listener and when the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, which the listener an emotive sensation.  In the lead up to Valentine's day I guess lots of us will be listening to appoggiaturas.) Source