Hoisted from the comments: evolution music!

Commenter jk* points us to this paper on the history of Darwin-inspired music. To which, HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS?!

That comment led me down a rabbit hole, searching for evolution-inspired music. Here are links to the YouTube videos of a bunch of my favorites. Hope you weren’t planning to accomplish anything for the next hour. 🙂

“Better Than a Dog” is from a musical meant to be performed by kids. Which just goes to show that musicals for kids have gotten waaaaay better than when I was in the 6th grade! This is ace. Great swing vibe. And I love how it takes Darwin’s (in)famous line about how a wife would be “better than a dog anyhow” and puts it into Emma’s mouth as a line about her future husband:

Many songs play with the idea of man as a monkey or an ape; that traces back to Darwin, of course. Here’s one by Gilbert & Sullivan. They didn’t think much of Darwin’s ideas, but we’ll forgive them because they’re Gilbert & Sullivan:

A few decades later, the Scopes trial inspired many songs about man as a monkey. Here’s a compilation of some of them, including the classic “Can’t Make a Monkey Out of Me”:

Not all man-as-monkey songs set scientific, religious, or political positions to music, though. From roughly around the time of the Scopes trial (I think…), here’s the playful “Evolution Blues”:

Closer to the present day, here’s Elvis Costello’s “Monkey To Man” (live, audio only). On the evidence of this song, Elvis Costello is still cooler and better than whoever it is kids these days listen to:

Here’s one by Bruce Springsteen:

And here’s one by The Kinks:

And here’s one by They Might Be Giants. (aside: Elvis Costello! Springsteen! The Kinks! TMBG! Clearly, the average quality of “rock musicians who’ve written man-as-monkey-or-ape songs” is much higher than the average quality of all rock musicians.)

Then there’s the genre of songs that try to teach science, or at least pay homage to science. Many of these set new, nerdy lyrics to an existing tune. “It’s a Long Way From Amphioxus”, sung to the tune of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, is a classic of the genre:

I’m not much of a rap fan, so I’m not really into most of Baba Brinkman’s evolution raps, despite their subject matter. But “Performance, Feedback, Revision” is inspired: a rap about the close analogy between writing a rap, and evolution by natural selection.

Chris Smither’s “Origin of Species” has to be the funniest evolution song ever. Here he imagines God explaining how He invented evolution to do the work of creation for Him. 🙂

They’ll have sex and mix up sections of their code

They’ll have mutations

The whole thing works like clockwork over time

I’ll just sit back in the shade while everyone gets laid

That’s what I call intelligent design

Plus, this is some seriously skillful guitar picking:

Finally, “Gentle Arms of Eden” is just a lovely folk song from Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer. Verges on an evolution-based hymn.

*Have I mentioned lately that our commenters are the best? 🙂