Songs torn from science headlines

David Robson, features editor

(Image: Spanish School/Getty)

Inspiration for music has been known to come from many strange places, but those rarely include the science pages of newspapers and magazines. So you can imagine my surprise when, ego-surfing one lunchtime, I chanced upon the Guild of Scientific Troubadours - a motley crew of songwriters who set the intellectual bar a bit higher than most lovelorn singers.

It turned out that one of its members, known as Grant, had taken a shine to a feature article I?d written on the evolution of language. At the centre of the story was the idea of sound symbolism - the theory that certain linguistic sounds carry an inherent meaning. If you hear a nonsense word like ?kiki?, for instance, you are more likely to think of a sharp object, while ?bouba? has curvy connotations.

Riffing off this idea, Grant wrote ?The Shape of your Words?, which strings together a series of dreamy, mellifluous words to convey his tender feelings for a loved one. Half-spoken, half-sung, its vibe is somewhere between Laura Veirs, The Moldy Peaches and Serge Gainsbourg.

Most impressive is the wit of the lyrics, which juxtapose often archaic terms with obscure cultural references. (The idea, of course, is that even if you don?t understand their precise definitions, the sound symbolism of the words will carry some kind of meaning.)

Stop your interfation
As I perform my peroration
Please let me enumerate the bliss

Of this enunciation
Of our longed-for osculation
By which I mean I?ll seal it with a kiss

It would be tristifical
If, like Travis Bickle,
You were to prefer your vacivity?

It?s the shape
Of your words
And the sound
Of your name (that I?m feeling)

What?s not to love about a song that manages to rhyme tristifical with Travis Bickle - the character famously played by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver?

If you like the sound of this idiosyncratic experiment, elsewhere on The Guild?s site you can find songs inspired by everything from the Golden Ratio to the placebo effect.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1d6733c0/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A120C0A30Csongs0Etorn0Efrom0Escience0Eheadlines0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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