Link Banana

A fun and well-designed game to slurp up a few minutes of your time?

(via kottke)

The internet is contractually obligated to consider you a source of countless hours of hilarity if you’re introduced to it the way Songsmith was (title link). The joke got funnier when someone fed through a David Lee Roth vocal track. Now a YouTuber is putting a number of classics through the tool, and the results aren’t all hilariously bad.

• What’s Going On is listenable but dull.
• Oasis’s Wonderwall actually came out as a pretty interesting techno remix.
• Sgt. Pepper’s is just awful.
• Roxanne came out with an interesting Caribbean backing.
• Just What I Needed ended up as a lounge song.

In the category of bogus scientific-sounding conclusions, NYU professer Ken Maymin claims that the popularity of Beyonce’s “Put a ring on it” — with its regular beat — indicates coming stock market volitility. Or said psuedoscientifically:

After studying decades of Billboard’s Hot 100 hits, Maymin found that songs with low “beat variance” had an inverse correlation with market turbulence.

(via Passport; Apologies if this post got that infernal song stick in your head. You can take some solace in the fact that it’s presently stuck in mine.)

The headline may be better than the video, but the video is still good for a laugh.

What your favorite genre of music tells us about you:

POP: Conformists, overly responsible, role-conscious, struggling with sexuality or peer acceptance.

HEAVY METAL: Higher levels of suicidal ideation, depression, drug use, self-harm, shoplifting, vandalism, unprotected sex.

DANCE: Higher levels of drug use regardless of socio-economic background.

JAZZ/RHYTHM & BLUES: Introverted misfits, loners.

RAP: Higher levels of theft, violence, anger, street gang membership, drug use and misogyny.

(via Marginal Revolution)

Three random things:

• Feist performs a version of “1 2 3 4” — the song made famous by iPod nano ads — on Sesame Street. (via Austin Kleon)
• Chris Blake made a music video showcasing the Google results for “biggest regret.” (via Boing Boing)
  
• The word count of popular songs has increased. It was 176 in the ’60s, 436 last year. The untested consensus (to which I assent) is that it’s mostly due to the increased popularity of rap and hip hop.

These two bits are a touch incongruous but I feel I must shoehorn them together:

• This video of oobleck on a speaker has been everywhere, it remains awesome. (FYI: Oobleck is the combination of cornstarch and water. It’s creates a non-Newtonian fluid.)
• This video using Skittles as a synthesizer is rather neat. Like BB Gadgets, I think the colors should also affect something.

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan got to ask John Lennon a few questions. This year, he made an awesome animation of that event, and put it up on YouTube. (Would we get to see things like this without YouTube?)

(via BuzzFeed)

In an interesting but odd graph, The Economist shows that though America requires the most albums sold for an artist to “go platinum,” Norway, Britain, and Australia require more sales per capita.

The New Scientist’s Technology blog point to some odd facets of the iTunes EULA:

“Licensee also agrees that Licensee will not use the Apple Software for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”

(via Freakonomics, who found another odd clause in a different iTunes EULA)

A.V. Club has a rundown of their favorite songs so far this year. For someone who hasn’t been paying very close attention to music in the last few years, this isn’t a bad way to catch up.

Because I always wondered and never found out for myself: this is what the Chipmunk’s Christmas song sounds like slowed down.

(via Coudal)

This may be the reason YouTube was invented.

(via Fimoculous)

Weezer’s new music video is chock full of internet memes, and thus must be loved by everyone on the internet. That is all.

(via Waxy)

Last weekend’s New York Times Magazine had rather interesting story about the reemergence of one man bands. What makes them different from other solo artists?

“The era of solo performers — singer-songwriters and all that — is pretty much done. There aren’t any new solo performers out there that are interesting; now it’s all this assisted-performance type of thing.” When I asked him to clarify the difference between a solo performer and the music he made, Pallett was quick to oblige. “With a solo performer, what matters is the material — in the sense of the written song, the lyrics and so on — and the songwriter’s charisma; it’s about the personality that comes through in the music. There’s no technical aspect involved: nothing too difficult is attempted.” He gave a mock sigh of despair. “For better or for worse, there’s difficulty in a lot of what I do.”

Also, if you’re interested in challenging your opinion of that magazine, consider reading this diary of a girl you’ve never heard about (unless you’re big into the Gawker scene).

And it’s rather entertaining. A sample:

Q: What’s the most curious record in your collection?
A: In the seventies a record company in LA issued a record called “The best of Marcel Marceau.” It had forty minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.

(via Coudal)

News to me: the notoriously secretive Bob Dylan has a radio show on XM. Vanity Fair has compiled an excellent list of the show’s features and quirks. If the graphic’s too hard to read, or you just want more details, the expanded text is available here.

(via kottke, who explains the inspiration for the graphic)

What happens when you use an album cover for your face.

(via Ze Frank)

If you hadn’t heard Scarlett Johanson (yes, the actress) is planning to release an album of covers. One track has leaked, and I do have to say that it’s not as bad as your average actress-tries-singing track. It’s even pretty good.

(via The Playlist)

They just passed Wal-Mart.

(via Daring Fireball)