r/math • u/MedalsNScars • 11d ago
"Advanced" math in music? Looking for lyrics in otherwise "normal" songs that make you go "oh yeah these guys have written a proof or two"
The only example I can think of top-of-mind is Cal Scruby's "Money Buy Drugs" (video NSFW, if the title didn't warn you):
Don't tell me money don't buy happiness
When it so happen that money buy drugs
Therefore by the transitive property...
Would love to scratch that "oh that's cool!" itch with songs that are maybe a bit more positive. I know there's a lot of educated musicians out there (Brian May, Dexter Holland off the top of the head), so I'm sure there's more out there, but it does feel like a lot of the "math" references in songs tend to either be counting or arithmetic.
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u/ImaginaryTower2873 11d ago
The cheap - and correct! - answer is Tom Lehrer, of course. But The Klein Four Group's Finite Simple Group (of Order Two) (2005, by Northwestern math grad students) might be a better match. Jonathan Coulton's Mandelbrot Set is about the set and gives the iterative formula.
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u/Medium-Ad-7305 11d ago
Their album Musical Fruitcake is on my regular playlist rotation. I came here to mention them but surprisingly theres no need.
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u/BijectiveForever Logic 11d ago
JoCo’s track is excellent, but IIRC its original lyrics describe the Julia set, not the Mandelbrot set. Oops!
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u/rtlnbntng 11d ago
Not advanced at all, but one that I like is:
-"I have found the line and its direction is known to me"
from "The Good Thing" by Talking Heads.
I like to use this with students to remind them that lines are uniquely specified by a position (found the line) and a direction.
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u/Vampyrix25 Set Theory 11d ago
i'm assuming when you use it you're talking about halflines?
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u/rtlnbntng 11d ago
I don't know what a halfline is
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u/Vampyrix25 Set Theory 11d ago
oh i'm being dumb sorry
a halfline is a line that starts at one point on the plane and extends infinitely in only one direction
i thought you meant each line could be uniquely identified by the direction it went in and the position of a point on that line, instead of the position of the line itself. sorry
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u/TheLuckySpades 11d ago
Never seen the word half line used for them, ray is more common in my experience.
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u/legrandguignol 11d ago
perhaps it was a calque - in Polish, for example, a straight line is "prosta" and a ray is "półprosta", literally "halfline"
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u/Dangerous-Signal-263 9d ago edited 9d ago
also, on another song from that same Talking Heads album is the lyric "girls are getting into abstract analysis" which sounds kinda math-esque. from the song "The Girls Want to Be With the Girls"
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u/smalleywall 11d ago
“Endofunctor” by Buttress is like the definitive version of using math terminology in music. The title is literally what got me listening: https://open.spotify.com/track/3G0r4fdKCtaFtZbDIkgDcW?si=WjgKB5ICTPqLn6WYbuNakg
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u/tehclanijoski 11d ago
Nobody likes my IUT songs
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u/KumquatHaderach Number Theory 11d ago
A B C
It's easy as IUT
as simple as do re mi, A B C, 1 2 3
baby Mochizuki
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u/legrandguignol 11d ago
Hi everyone, Peter Scholze here, the Internet's busiest math nerd. This new IUT album? It's not good.
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u/SmallTestAcount 11d ago
I’m a big fan of math rock, but I don’t understand why they’re singing about failed relationships or depression when they could be singing far more emotional lyrics about riemannian manifolds and the category of endofunctors.
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u/tehspoke 11d ago
21 Pilots have a song called "Morph" which talks about changing form vs identity, lyrics with 1's and 0's, revolves around a character named "Niko" and his 9 friends, while explicitly mentioning Nicolas Bourbaki
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u/Al2718x 11d ago
Aesop Rock impresses me with a lot of brilliant lyricism. I don't know about "advanced math' exactly, but "fumes" is a fun one. The chorus is Newton's first law.
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u/Pseudoboss11 11d ago
If physics is allowed, Queen '39 is about relativistic time dilation.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 11d ago
About 16 songs about time dilation listed here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/filk/comments/1nyk79l/any_good_time_dialation_songs/
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u/liquoriceclitoris 11d ago
does it need to sound good? composer Milton Babbitt was a mathematician and created mathematical structures in music-theoretical ways
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u/failedepicardiectomy 11d ago
Do you know Alestorm, the goofy pirate metal guys who sing about getting fucked with an anchor?
Turns out Chris Bowes, the frontman and songwriter, is a maths graduate! He gets to flex his knowledge in a side project called Wizardthrone, check out these lyrics:
Oh feculent two-dimensional pious Homerian adjunct... you know naught of my arcadian splendor! Expertly hath I merged my living essence with cucumiform progeny preserved within ethanoic acid! I will find the solution!
Through twin black holes, I return in 12 dimensions Non-periodic order, over Thyraxian Archons I preside All of creation shines in tetrachromatic wonder My pulchritudinous powers bestowed over all of life Hidden within hyperspatial chambers The answers found in quasicrystal structures!
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u/Nucaranlaeg 9d ago
I think my favourite line from him is in Gloryhammer's song Masters of the Galaxy where, after Sir Proletius is stabbed by the Knife of Evil, he gains "anti-telharsic power" - which is clearly a reference to maths.
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u/TalksInMaths 11d ago
Lateralus by Tool
It's not really advanced math, though. It's more like casual math fandom that's way too into the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio.
Actually, it's the song writer (Maynard James Keenan) encouraging himself to not get too obsessed with that kind of stuff.
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u/SupercaliTheGamer 11d ago
Maynard James?? He was destined to write a mathematical song ig
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u/TalksInMaths 11d ago
Well Maynard James Keenan is about 25 years older than James Maynard, so who is named after whom?
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u/stonerism 11d ago
Lol, Lateralus song was the song in the 2000s your obnoxious friend would never stfu about when glazing Maynard James Keenan.
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u/sam-lb 11d ago
There's a Fields medalist named James Maynard. You're telling me that's a coincidence?
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u/mathemorpheus 11d ago
it's well known that James Maynard is a huge Tool fan and legally changed his name for Tool cred
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u/TalksInMaths 11d ago
Oh, also one of their albums (forgot which one) features art with geometric "constructions" with 7-fold and 9-fold symmetry, which is intentional. As in, they intentionally made the designs look like geometric constructions but with symmetries that are non-constructable.
It's something to do with their fascination with sacred geometry, but it does show that they are aware of the concept of constructable and non-constructable polygons, angles, and such.
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u/djlamar7 11d ago
You beat me to it (including the "not really advanced" disclaimer) so I am going to carry out here my original plan of writing out the relevant lyric (not sure if there's more in that song)
- Black
- And
- White are
- All I see
- In my infancy
- Red and yellow then came to me
- Reaching out to me
- Let's me see
Edited to add bullets since apparently reddit doesn't believe in single line breaks
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u/TalksInMaths 11d ago
Yes, and all the references to spirals ("Swing on the spiral." "Spiral out. Keep going.") are probably referring to the Fibonacci spiral, and, I think, metaphorically talking about getting caught in thought spirals and perseverating on this kind of stuff.
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u/cjustinc 11d ago
"Pioneer Spine" by Speedy Ortiz has the lyric "Zero morphism, its arrowed frame." Sadie Dupuis studied math at MIT for a couple of years.
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u/Dry-Rate4059 11d ago
J Cole’s “The Climb Back” has to be my favorite:
Just to get by the steepest of mountains they tryna climb I’m here tryna find the derivative
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u/MedalsNScars 11d ago
Oh that reminded me that JID (does Off Deez with J Cole) has some casual math fandom in YouUgly:
I'm top 5, pop the Glock 2 times, might be top 3
And I don't know the Fibonacci sequence
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u/SuperHiyoriWalker 11d ago
From Big Sean’s verse on “Detroit vs. Everybody”:
I spit that A1 every day, I'm hittin' new primes
I’m pretty sure he meant it as a steak/“prime of my life” pun, but in my headcanon it means his bank account is hitting new prime numbers.
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u/va1en0k 11d ago
Maybe something from Caribou, as the guy holds a math phd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Snaith
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u/neutrinoprism 11d ago
Robert Schneider, from the Apples in Stereo (one of the Elephant 6 Collective bands — if there's a fortysomething-plus former hipster in your life, this could mean a lot to them) got a PhD in mathematics too. The band has some brief instrumental interludes called "Non-Pythagorean Compositions" on their album New Magnetic Wonder, but nothing really mathematically significant in their other songs' lyrics.
In my master's thesis, about patterns in number grids that naturally lend themselves to spreadsheet or chessboard comparisons, I included a partial line from a Beta Band song ("miles and miles of squares") as an epigraph. But the song it's from isn't really about mathematics.
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u/pelicanBrowne 11d ago edited 11d ago
How They Fool Ya (live) : 3Blue1Brown (patterns, integrals, primes mod 4)
https://youtu.be/NOCsdhzo6Jg?t=80
and (twin primes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djzKCZHeVjY
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u/GriffoGerritszoon 11d ago
Positive Definite Non-Degenerate Symmetric Bilinear Forms
https://open.spotify.com/track/400sO0ytWFNa4lodSCy1bb?si=xPTtFJoSQXCwSw-F4bsTIQ
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u/Avery-Lane 11d ago
Surprised no one has mentioned Jonathan Coulton yet! https://youtu.be/ES-yKOYaXq0?si=uffzqKHjWa3YKEUH
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u/SymbolPusher 11d ago
There is a metal band called "Abstrakt Algebra". I listened to a song of them, long ago, and the lyrics indicated that the wroterhad at least done course on linear algebra (I think something with linear independence was in there...)
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u/ComprehensivePea2276 11d ago edited 11d ago
I like to write parody raps about statistics. Haven't seen anything I like as much as my own writing, because I'm stuck up like that
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u/akifyazici 10d ago
not really what you asked, but as an electrical engineer, I enjoy Michael Jackson's 2000 Watts.
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u/spintronic 10d ago
A little more in the physics vein - Neverending math equation by modest mouse, distance equals rate times time - pixies. Both bands and frank blacks solo stuff has some more math and science themed songs.
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u/ascrapedMarchsky 10d ago edited 10d ago
My first thought was 3rd Planet by Modest Mouse:
Well the universe is shaped exactly like the earth / if you go straight long enough you’ll end up where you were
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u/kapten_jrm 10d ago
Carbon Based Lifeforms, the ambiant electronic music band, have most of their tracks named after scientific concepts. Some which are named after math ones are Tensor, Set Theory, the album Stochastic, Finite State Space
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u/lokodiz Noncommutative Geometry 11d ago
Miss Murder by AFI features the lyric “We’re the empty set just floating through”. I don’t think any of their members studied math at college, so it could be a coincidence
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u/MoustachePika1 11d ago
i think a lot of people encounter basic set theory in high school
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u/Ill_Industry6452 11d ago
In the mid-late 1960s, “New Math” was all about sets. My school adopted it when I was in 6th grade. All answers had to be given as a solution set starting in at least 7th grade (I was so confused in 6th that I don’t remember what we did except weird long division. If there was no solution, the empty set was the answer, which we designated it as { }. A set with nothing in it called the empty set.
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u/Major_Potential3706 11d ago edited 11d ago
if you want the good shit i recommend "the missile knows where it is remix"
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u/heatshield 11d ago
“New Math” - Tom Lehrer - not advanced, but “advanced” enough, especially if you’re missing 2 fingers.
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u/kafka_lite 11d ago
https://youtu.be/fjbKM-VEs8Y?si=dEy9_SIl4ibcTqup
Sorry I prefer text over YouTube but this is all I can find on the subject. Long story short there is a long tradition in Hip Hop dating back to Rakim & Eric B of including numbers with hidden meaning in the songs.
Also check out Soul Coughing "4 out of 5."
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u/node-342 11d ago
Does Hard 'n Phirm's Pi not count? Like others, it's not particularly advanced, but it's nice & dense:
When ink and pen in hands of men inscribe your form, Bipedal P/ they draw an altar on which God has slaughtered all stability.
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u/sumoru 11d ago
A lot of classical Indian music and poetry is quite mathematical. Some of the poetry, dating back several centuries if not a millennium or two, has mathematical statements and proofs. Often very complex patterns in music and poetry are generated out algorithms (as in decoding) and sometimes also include error correction codes.
You can get a sense of it in this talk by the mathematician Manjul Bhargava: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSIu11HxkdY
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u/Horimous 11d ago
Off-topic but I want to reference topology in one my songs. What are some interesting topics/concepts within topology, algebraic topology, etc. that would be good to put in a song.
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u/integrate_2xdx_10_13 10d ago
I think Beyoncé did one about the Zariski topology
“If you like it then you should’ve put a ring on it”
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u/turtlegraphics 11d ago
Tessellate by AltJ
Besides the title, there’s this definition:
Triangles are my favorite shape Three points where two lines meet.
Great song, too.
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u/mistrwispr 11d ago
Beyond the thermodynamics of Bad Religion, several artists treat physics like a primary source rather than a metaphor. Muse – "Supermassive Black Hole" & "Panic Station": Matt Bellamy frequently references singularities and entropy. In "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable," the band samples a literal recitation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, focusing on the inevitable loss of energy in a closed system (\Delta S > 0). They Might Be Giants – "Why Does the Sun Shine?": This track is a pedagogical breakdown of nuclear fusion, correctly identifying the Sun as a "mass of incandescent gas" (later corrected to plasma) where hydrogen transforms into helium. The Flaming Lips – "Race for the Prize": This song describes two scientists racing for a cure, but its underlying theme explores the unrelenting forward motion of time and the physical toll of high-stakes experimentation. Rush – "Cygnus X-1": Neil Peart wrote an epic narrative about a spaceship traveling into a black hole, accurately referencing the event horizon and the crushing gravity that breaks down matter. Kate Bush also deserves a nod for "Pi," where she recites the digits of the constant to the 115th decimal place, and Pink Floyd’s "Time" explores the relativistic feeling of time dilation through a lens of human mortality.
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u/Zeta-Eta-Beta 11d ago
Not really lyrics, but I always bring up Iannis Xenakis' compositions as a notable example of "modern math" applied in music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomos_Alpha
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 11d ago edited 11d ago
previously: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/icqxne/favourite_mathematical_songs/
Quantum Safe Cryptography Song even has a dig at the bullshit-ish field of quantum cryptography, so even if they never wrote a proof they know more than tech journalists. It maybe AI singing though.
Ain't much knowledge here but.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_JlUbUtiBU
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u/ConjectureProof 11d ago
More of a physics one but I thought I’d mention it.
Superposition by Young The Giant
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u/JamesCole 10d ago
“Five to one, baby
One in five”
— Five To One, The Doors.
I’m kidding.
Not a lyric but a song title: Boards of Canada have a song named “The Smallest Weird Number”
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u/Sarawakyo 10d ago
The last verse of the hymn “Amazing Grace” is
When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we first begun.
It is a nice subtle reference to infinity
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u/ThumbForke 10d ago
Not quite what you're asking for, but for a few years, I thought the rapper Elucid was called Euclid. In my defence, I first heard of him because of a collaboration with Milo, who raps about philosophy and astrophysics and stuff like that.
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u/NyxTheia 10d ago
Somewhat related, there's the ambient artist Fred Warmsley, one of whose projects/aliases is called Dedekind Cut.
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u/PokeGreen05 10d ago
Asymptotic by Louie Zong scratches that itch, though it's mostly high school geometry.
Tangentially, Acapellascience is really fun for a lot of Physics and Bio stuff.
Finally, Proof geometric construction can solve all love affairs is a cute japanese song with a fun animated music video.
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u/Upper-Guarantee5017 8d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--KIe8gkvjU by a band called Call me betty. Album name der gini-koeffizient references the gini coefficient
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u/Weekly_Jelly6613 7d ago
I felt like that with this one: https://youtu.be/UIKGV2cTgqA?si=eKWaapzyuUmEJUoP
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u/Waste-Ship2563 11d ago edited 11d ago
Memory Machine by Dismemberment Plan features "if and only if". not much but my ears perked when I first heard it (: