Think you know everything there is to know about music? Prepare to be blown away as we take a look at some of the most interesting, unbelievable facts about musicians and the music industry!
1.The World’s Oldest Surviving Song was Performed About 3,400 Years Ago;
Have you ever wondered what the oldest song in the world is? The fact is, with such a long history, much of it lost, we’ll never know. But what we do know is that the oldest surviving song is the Hurrian Hymn Text H6. French archaeologists discovered Twenty-six clay tablets containing text in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit in the early 1950s. They appear to include “a complete cult hymn and is the oldest preserved song with notation in the world.”
2. Some Instruments are Much Older That You Think;
What we think of as a flute is usually made of metal by a machine. But they are much older than they let on. In fact, the oldest surviving musical instruments are all flutes, some carved from bird bones, others from mammoth ivory. Discovered in a stone-age cave in Germany in 2012, these flutes are thought to be at least 42,000 years old! That means they were already a part of music history when the Hurrian Hymns were carved into their clay tablets!
3. The King of Rock n’ Roll is the World’s Best Selling Solo Artist;
Despite being relatively new in annuls of music history and relatively dated by today’s pop-culture standards, Elvis Presley remains the King. Despite the music industry he ruled over being 60 or 70 years past, his popularity has not faded. With over 1 billion sales worldwide, the King of Rock n’ Roll is the undisputed best-selling solo artist.
Although some younger music lovers may consider Elvis and his music old-fashioned, the wider music-listening audience is still smitten!
4. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the Most-Streamed Song From the 20th Century;
If you had to guess which song released in the 20th Century was the most-streamed, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” might be an obvious choice–but it would also be the right one! Originally released in 1975, it reached the top spot on the UK charts for the first that same year. And then, following the unfortunate death of Freddy Mercury, it reached the top again in 1991. Its popularity and place in popular culture has only grown in the 30+ years since then, reaching over 2.5 billion streams on Spotify alone.
5. Franz Schubert Was So Busy, He Forgot His Own Work
Schubert once told a friend, “I compose every morning. When I finish one piece, I start another.”
With that mentality, he composed more than 600 songs before he passed away at only 31. Between his first song, in March 1811, and his last, written in October 1828, he averaged about three songs per month. He also composed mountains of orchestral, chamber, piano, churn, and opera music. Being so busy, you might ask how he kept track of it all. The simple answer is he didn’t. When Schubert’s friend, singer, and fellow composer Johann Michael Vogl gave the first performance of many of Schubert’s songs, he included one he especially liked. However, the song was in a high key he found uncomfortable. So, Vogl had it transposed and hired a copyist to prepare a new manuscript. A few weeks later, he performed it for Schubert. Schubert loved it and exclaimed, “That’s a good song. Who wrote it?”
Weird Music History
The “Sweet Child o ‘Mine ” riff is a guitar exercise
Everyone thinks that the “Sweet Child o ‘Mine” riff is the fruit of Slash’s elaborate ingenuity. In reality, the riff was born out of a guitar exercise that aimed to jump the strings. Slash was just warming up his fingers! Axl Rose was listening and started singing over him using the text of a poem he had written to his girlfriend at the time. An interesting curiosity: Axl’s exclamation “Where do we go now?” it was meant literally, as he didn’t know how to proceed with the text.
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