1000+ Facts And Trivia

Chapter 39: Music🎶🎵

• Music video 'Gangnam Style' was so popular, it broke YouTube's view counter, which had to be upgraded.

• Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee have 6.6 billions views on YouTube as of February 2020.

• Eminem's Rap God has the most words in a song, at 1560 words.

• The oldest musical instrument in the world is a 35000-year-old bone flute.

• Concerts first became commonplace in the 19th century.

• Paul McCartney was the first musician to make a live broadcast into outer space.

• British singer Katie Melua holds the world record for the deepest underwater concert.

• Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is the most-streamed song of the 20th century.

• Queen's four members appear on a commemorative British £5 coin issued in January 2020.

• The harmonica is the world's best-selling music instrument.

• The Beatles are the best-selling artists worldwide, having sold more than 600 million albums.

• Elvis Presley is the highest-selling individual artist (more than 500 million) based on sales claims and Rihanna is the highest-selling individual artist based on certified units (230 million).

• To win a gold disc, an album needs to sell 100,000 copies in Britain, and 500,000 in the United States.

• The term "disc jockey" was first used in 1937.

• YouTube is the world's largest on-demand music service.

• ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)

• "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson was the first video by a black artist to air on MTV. The song is off "Thriller", the best-selling album in history (65 million copies sold).

• Some people feel nothing toward music. Per the results of one study conducted at the University of Barcelona, 5 percent of participants did not feel any emotion whatsoever-didn't feel any chills or want to tap their feet-when listening to music. Before you start calling these study subjects monsters, know that they're totally normal in other ways: they received pleasure from other things, like food and sex, and had no other evident psychological issues. These were happy, healthy college students who just naturally did not care for any kind of music.

• The British Navy uses Britney Spears songs to scare off pirates. According to reports, British naval officers play Britney Spears songs to scare away Somali pirates off of Africa's eastern coast. Her songs "Oops I Did It Again" and "Baby One More Time" are the songs which are used. The rationale of playing these songs is because, supposedly, Somali pirates have a strong dislike for western culture and music, which make Britney Spears' songs a perfect fit to make the bandits move on as quickly as possible.

• Metallica is the first and only band to have played on all 7 continents. In 2013, rock band Metallica achieved a new Guinness World Records title after becoming the first musical act to play a concert on all seven continents. They set this record after performing for 120 scientists and competition winners in a transparent dome at Carlini Station in Antarctica. The band actually held concerts on all seven continents within one calendar year, following tour dates in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

• Michael Jackson tried to buy Marvel comics. Michael Jackson so badly wanted to play Spider-Man in a movie that he attempted to buy Marvel Comics-the company that created the character and owns the rights to Spider-Man-so he could make it happen. Stan Lee, Marvel's chairman up until his death in 2018, has recalled this story publicly. The comic legend said that he thought Jackson would've been a good Spider-Man. However, Lee felt that Jackson was not a very good businessman.

• International Strange Music Day was created by a New York City musician named Patrick Grant, to encourage people to play and listen to new types of music they're not familiar with or appreciate music you might otherwise consider to be strange or bizarre. The mantra is to "listen without prejudice." To celebrate this particular day, there are concerts, and movements to introduce new types of music to children in an effort to broaden their musical horizons.

• A song that gets stuck in your head is called an earworm. An earworm, also sometimes called "a brainworm," "sticky music," or "stuck song syndrome," refers to catchy music that continually repeats through a person's mind, even after it's no longer playing. There have actually been studies done on earworms, including one out of the University of London, which found that earworms could also be triggered by experiences that bring up a memory of a song, such as seeing a word that reminds you of the song, hearing a few notes from the song, or feeling an emotion which you associate with the song.

• The Spice Girls are commonly known individually by their nicknames, Posh, Baby, Scary, Sporty, and Ginger. However, they didn't come up with those names on their own. In fact, the editor of teeny bopper magazine, Top of the Pops, named the girls after interviewing them. Even though they were already established as The Spice Girls, their individual nicknames stuck and were accepted by the band, who thought the names were funny.

• The first pop video was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, released in 1975.

• Ariana Grande was the first person in history to have the lead single from each of her first three albums debut in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.

• The British anthem was performed the most times in a single performance. In 1909, while waiting for King Edward VII who was getting dressed a German band played the anthem 17 times.

• Elvis's favorite collectibles were official badges. He collected police badges in almost every city he performed in.

• Elvis was an avid gun collector. His collection of 40 weapons included M-16s and a Thompson submachine gun.

• In 1972, Leslie Harvey of Stone the Crows died after being electrocuted onstage in England. In 1976 Keith Relf, who used to play for The Yardbirds, was electrocuted by his guitar while playing in his basement.

• During a mid-performance in 1994 Ramon Barrero, a Mexican musician famous for playing the world's smallest harmonica, inhaled the harmonica and choked to death.

• Zayn Malik is the new Brian McFadden (Westlife). They were both first to leave their boyband, and both inexplicably changed their names to be spelt with a y instead of i while in the band.

• Baby One More Time was offered to Five and TLC before it was released by Britney. Five also turned down Bye Bye Bye by *N Sync, cos they thought it was "a bag of shit."

• Leona Lewis missed out on two no.1 hits, which were originally intended for her: Burn by Ellie Goulding and We Found Love by Rihanna.

• Rihanna has also passed up on several hits, including Lean On by Major Lazer, which was supposed to feature her instead of MØ. She seems to be a fan of the MØ version anyway, as she was recently filmed listening to it.

• Monaco's army is smaller than its military orchestra. Monaco's army has just 82 soldiers. Its military orchestra has 85 musicians. This makes Monaco the only country whose army is smaller than its military orchestra.

• The song Despacito holds seven world records on its own. Despacito holds the record for the world's most viewed online video. It is also the most viewed music video online and the most viewed duet YouTube video. As a single, it spent the most number of weeks in the USA's Number One spot. It is the most liked video online and the first to pass 5 billion views. Finally, it is the most streamed track in the world.

• Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen is the shortest pop hit in the world. Japanese comedian Pikotaro released Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen in 2016. It gained 1 million hits on the internet and a place on the USA's Hot Billboard 100. At 45 seconds long, it broke the record for the shortest song on the chart. Guinness' Book of World Records recognized this and gave the song its spot.

• Japan has the shortest national anthem in the world. Japan's national anthem Kimi Ga Yo has only four lines. This is gives it the record for the shortest national anthem in the world.

• To pass the time, Yuri Gagarin sang a song during his historic mission on space. It was spontaneous, as the cosmonaut was waiting for reentry to finish. This song was The Motherland Hears, composed by Dmitri Shostakovich.