Now That's What I Call Chemical Engineering Music

Paul Okey picks out 13 songs for TCE’s first-ever chemical engineering-related music playlist

WHAT started off as one item among many in an editorial brainstorming session has now found its way into the magazine. I can only assume it’s because this article is cheaper to implement than my other idea which would have seen me spending 24 hours in major European cities while touring sites of chemical engineering importance.

Still, as someone who delights in compiling a playlist to suit any occasion, from weddings to wakes – I had two for my partner’s labour depending on the mood which went very under-appreciated – the chance to add chemical engineering to my musical catalogue was one I couldn’t turn down. Berlin can wait (to take my breath away!).

They Might Be Giants: Meet the Elements

I owe a lot to They Might Be Giants. Don’t Let’s Start was the first “alternative” record I bought and set me on a musical journey that sees me still fully embracing the indie scene nearly 40 years later. Most famous for their 1990 release Birdhouse in Your Soul, the band’s surreal, humorous lyrics have helped them make a successful sideways move into children’s educational music. Meet the Elements comes from their Grammy-nominated album Here Comes Science and stands up well against their earlier stuff, though I’m not sure how I’d dance to it.

Chemical Brothers: Galvanise

Two for the price of one here. The Chemical Brothers weren’t even brothers. And they were originally called the Dust Brothers, only changing their name to the Chemical Brothers after the threat of legal action from the US hip-hop producers of the same name, which makes me think that they weren’t even chemical engineers either.

OMD: Stanlow

You can go one of two ways when writing a song about a chemical plant it seems. Jeremiah Nisbett’s Chemical Plant “with its exhaled vocals and stark tableau, shimmers with Springsteen-like desire amongst the harshness”, according to a reviewer, while Great Big Sea bring the mood down even further with The Chemical Worker’s Song, “every day you’re in this place you’re two days nearer death”.

Thankfully, English electronic band OMD’s Stanlow takes a different route, celebrating the Ellesmore Port-based oil refinery with a 6min 41sec love song. “We used to do a lot of gigs in Manchester when we were on Factory [Records], said co-founder Paul Humphreys. “We’d go over from the Wirral and come back late at night and Stanlow looked like this futuristic beautiful city, and we fell in love with it.” Also, worth a mention here for the 1984 concept album Ammonia Avenue by the Alan Parsons Project, which came about after band co-creator Eric Woolfson made a visit to the ICI plant in Billingham, UK.

Kraftwerk: Radioactivity

Radioactivity went on to inspire another OMD song, Electricity, and remains a mainstay of the Kraftwerk setlist some 48 years after its release. The original lyrics namechecked Marie Curie, while later versions have included references to Chernobyl, Harrisburg, Sellafield, Hiroshima, and Fukushima.

Blondie: Atomic

The accompanying video and US single cover feature an atomic explosion, but singer Debbie Harry said the word “atomic” had no fixed meaning in the song. So, it’s not a song about the dangers of nuclear war, despite being released at the height of the Cold War. It’s not about someone whose hair is beautiful, either. It’s just random words to fit a space, which, as a sub-editor, I really struggle with.

Imagine Dragons: Radioactive

“I’m waking up to ash and dust”, “I’m breathing in the chemicals”, “I’m radioactive, radioactive”.

A song about radioactivity then? No, according to lead singer Dan Reynolds, it’s about losing faith in Mormonism. Of course it is.

Radiohead: Polyethylene, Parts 1 & 2

It’s quite appropriate in an issue in which we feature Dermot Manning (see p52) that we should have a song named after the material he played a major part in commercialising. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke was certainly concerned about the effects of polyethylene at the time of recording the song in 1997. His initial lyric notes mention that the plastic “does not ever disappear” and the line “stuck in a frozen lake of polyethylene”.

Also included in his notes is “polypropylene”, presumably for the remixed version.

Fever Ray: Carbon Dioxide

“Love’s carbon dioxide, can’t say out loud, I’m afraid to lose it,” says Fever Ray in the 2022 electronic pop offering. No, not an ode to carbon capture, but an exploration of the all-consuming nature of love. It nevertheless drew a chemical engineering-based explanation from Karin Dreijer, the Swedish singer who performs as Fever Ray. “Carbon dioxide, a compound which, being defined by its bond with oxygen, seems to me like a neat chemical expression of the essential compassion that the conditions for life on our planet depend; compassion and joy,” says Dreijer to rubberstamp her entry into our playlist.

Darius, Wayne Snow: Equilibrium

Falling just short with their 2015 offering Helios, the French producer and Nigeria-born producer made sure of their inclusion with this 2022 song about finding the balance between chaos and calm. Influenced by Earth, Wind & Fire’s Let’s Groove, apparently.

Blur: Chemical World

I just had to get a song by Blur in here and that it’s from my favourite album (Modern Life is Rubbish) is a bonus. It is about the intense feelings of emptiness that come with modern living. To think 1993 was once modern, we still had a Betamax
video recorder.

Ladyhawke: Reactor Semisonic: Chemistry

New Zealand singer-songwriter Ladyhawke likes to talk about processes and mixing but it’s purely related to her approach to music and not any chemical engineering leanings. Reactor, while promising from a subject matter point of view, appears to be about a relationship break-up and not atoms.

Similarly, Semisonic fail to deliver much past the title of their 2001 song. The only experiments the song’s main protagonists were conducting weren’t of the scientific kind, not unless they had a mobile lab bench set up in their bedroom. Confusingly, the song is from the album All About Chemistry, which as far as I can work out is not even a little bit about chemistry (though it does have some rather, ahem, interesting test tubes on the album sleeve).

“Semisonic have, all of a sudden, become the best band in the world,” said one reviewer of the album on Amazon. Proof you can never trust an Amazon review.

David Guetta featuring Sia: Titanium

Titanium was discovered in 1791 by Cornish vicar and mineralogist William Gregor and while David Guetta cannot claim to have discovered Sia in quite the same way (in black sand five miles south southwest of Falmouth), he can take credit for introducing the previously underground Australian singer to a mainstream audience.

Katy Perry had originally been earmarked to sing the track but turned it down for the fear it was too much like her huge hit Firework, leaving Sia’s original vocals as the ones we hear on the single.

Sia actually wrote the track, too, though rumours it was originally called Manaccanite are thought to be just that.

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Listen to my Now That’s What I Call Chemical Engineering Music playlist on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zIDMNN