Confession: I am a hoarder.
My entire existence is built on finding interesting and obscure facts about music. It really is a 24-7 thing.
Most of what I find ends up in the radio show/podcast, The Ongoing History of New Music and the podcast, Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry.
But what about the research that doesn’t get used? This is information that is outside the mandate of what I usually do on-air and online. Do I just disregard this material and throw it away?
Heavens, no! As I said, I’m a hoarder, and that includes hoarding information, trivia and knowledge. If it has to do with music, I save it, regardless of whether it has any immediate or short-term use. Rather than keep it all to myself, I save the best unused trivia for an end-of-the-year data dump.
Here is the 2025 edition. What you do with this material is completely up to you.
1. The mysterious ‘WKRP’ end credits
If you’re a fan of WKRP in Cincinnati, that classic TV show about a bunch of misfits at a radio station, you can probably hum the opening theme in your head. But how about the closing theme, which is a lot rockier? It’s officially known as the WKRP in Cincinnati end credits and was composed and performed by an Atlanta musician named Jim Ellis. He never bothered to write any lyrics for it — he just vocalized gibberish. Why? As a statement on how many rock songs feature lyrics that no one can hear.
2. The hit that was entirely gibberish
In 1972, an Italian singer named Adriano Celentano wrote a song called Prisencolinensinainciusol. Don’t worry about translating it because it doesn’t mean anything. In fact, the whole song is that way. It kind of sounds like American English, but it’s all just garbage. Celentano wanted to prove that Europeans would buy into any music they thought was from America. When it was released as a single, it charted in several countries, reaching number two in Belgium and the top 10 in Italy and the Netherlands. I can see why, too. Despite the lyrical nonsense, the track is a banger.
3. A ‘Smoke on the Water’ secret. Two, actually.
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The riff for Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water is one of the most iconic of all time. Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore claims that he based it on a backwards rendition of the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It’s also extraordinarily similar to a bossa nova song from 1964 called Maria Moita.
4. ‘Ridiculousness’ makes an insane amount of money for Devo
Ridiculousness, the clip show that basically took over MTV and MuchMusic, uses a Devo song as its theme. The track is Uncontrollable Urge from the band’s 1978 album, Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! It was never released as a single, but it was a live favourite to the end.
The composer was Mark Mothersbaugh. He reportedly made a million dollars a year by licensing the song to Ridiculousness. I did talk to him about that, but he was a little evasive on whether this was 100 per cent true. Whatever the case, Ridiculousness was cancelled in November 2025, so unless it lives on in reruns, Mothersbaugh won’t be making anything from it now. (Fun fact: In 2020, Ridiculousness played on MTV for 36 hours straight. One week, it accounted for 113 of the 168 hours in MTV’s broadcast week.
5. A degree in heavy metal? Sure!
Summa College in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, offers degrees in heavy metal. You can study singing (including the death metal voice) and any number of instruments. Upon graduation, students are offered placement opportunities. I’d like to know what those are.
6. A radio station programmed by ducks
Run by six English ducks — yes, birds — living in a garden, Duck Radio operates with a sensor that encourages the birds to peck at it. Every time they do, the station switches to another online station broadcasting from somewhere in the world. Listeners never know what they’re going to get or for how long they’re going to get it.
7. Amazon’s amazing internet
Amazon’s biggest moneymaker is AWS, which provides cloud storage solutions for big, big companies. To keep up with the demand, Amazon has plans to lay a new undersea cable in the Atlantic capable of streaming 12.5 million high-def movies at the same time. I did the math, and that’s equivalent (I think) to 585,937,500 CDs a second.
8. Was ‘Sesame Street’ always this subversive?
If you’re a certain age, you’ll remember this counting song from Sesame Street. Officially called Jazzy Numbers, it was sung by Grace Slick of The Jefferson Airplane, the creator of drug songs such as White Rabbit.
9. Is This the true origin of the pumpkin spice latte?
Pumpkin spice latte starts showing up everywhere in late August. It’s a flavour that dates back more than a century and is used in all manner of baking recipes, but not, as far as anyone can tell, in any coffee beverages. Starbucks, which introduced the pumpkin spice latte in 2003, is the biggest supplier in the known universe. However, if we wind things back to 1995, there’s a documented bit of audience banter from Tori Amos during a show in Seattle. I quote: “You all have your own Starbucks things. I have one that tastes like pumpkin pie. It’s my own invention. It’s my contribution to Halloween.” Again, this is eight years before Starbucks introduced it, so…
By the way, Kenny G claims to have invented the frappuccino. And Ariana Grande allegedly has something to do with the cloud macchiato.
10. The karaoke machine that was a danger to Canadian police and the EMS
A unit called the Soundstage Party Cube came with a wireless microphone component. About 905 of them were sold in Canada between March 2023 and June 2025. Earlier this year, there was a recall. It turned out that the frequency used by its wireless mic interferes with the radio transmissions used by police and EMS in Canada. Health Canada flagged the machine because of the potential injury hazard to people requiring emergency services, as someone’s rendition of My Way using a Soundstage Party Cube creates an interference, for instance.
For more facts like this, check out The Ongoing History of New Music Podcast, 60 mind-blowing facts about music in 60 minutes (2025) edition.
See you next year.
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