Late Night Music Meme

Top 5 On Friday - Week 193
From The Music Memoirs

Top 5 songs that make you feel smarter for having heard them. (Interpret as you see fit.)

» "The Presidents" by Jonathan Coulton
The song features a quick line about each of the 43 United States Presidents. There are a couple of small historical inaccuracies (Garfield was actually assassinated in 1881, for example), and being recorded in 2005, there's no entry for President-elect Obama yet. Still, I can now name the first 43 Presidents—in order, no less—something I was never able to do before. "Washington came first and he was perfect, John Adams kept us out of war with France...."

» "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer
Something he picked up in his brief career as a scientist, it's simply the names of the chemical elements, set to a possibly recognizable tune. "There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium...."

» "Wakko's America" by Wakko Warner (Animaniacs)
Good idea: Listing the names of all 50 US States and their capitals. Bad idea: Forgetting to phrase your answer in the form of a question. "Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Columbus is the capital of Ohio...."

» "YYZ" by Rush
In addition to showing off the group's instrumental virtuosity, the song also opens with the title (YYZ, which is also the code for the Toronto airport) depicted rhythmically in Morse code. "-•-- -•-- --•• -•-- -•-- --•• .... "

» "New Math" by Tom Lehrer
The important lesson here is that Base 8 is just like Base 10, really. If you're missing two fingers. "You can't take three from two, two is less than three, so you look at the four in the tens place...."