It's All About the Silmarils

[bnewman]

Did you fall asleep reading the Silmarillion? I'll sum it up for you — as an epic rap ballad!

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

after "It's All About the Benjamins" by Puff Daddy

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Allergic to Nuts

[bnewman]

I'm fortunate not to have any (known) food allergies (for now), but I have friends with serious nut allergies — this one's for you.

content warning: explicit description of serious allergy symptoms

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer

 

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Arm Cannon

[bnewman]

Another perspective on Metroid heroine Samus Aran.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Wings" by Cat Faber

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Down Under

[bnewman]

A more light-hearted take on the story of Persephone.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Down Under" by Colin Hay and Ron Stryker

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End of the Level

[bnewman]

Up all night playing Super Mario Bros. or any other video game? Trying to beat that high score? One more level? I know that feeling.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Friend of the Devil" by Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and John Dawson

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A Habitrail Refuted

[bnewman]

Blake's song tells the story of one hamster who wanders into a complex habitrail and more than one hamster who emerge from the other end. That can't happen, and of course the absurdity is the whole point of the original song, but, just to cap off the absurdity, here is a rigorous proof.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "A Habitrail Named Klein" by Blake Hodgetts

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Halo: Final Warning

[bnewman]

This song came about from playing the remastered Halo and just trying to think of songs with halos in them — this was the most obvious one.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Every Morning" by Sugar Ray

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The Hole in Sector Four

[bnewman]

You can check out of this spatial anomaly any time you like, but...

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Hotel California" by the Eagles

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I'm Going to Go Back There Someday (Into the West)

[bnewman]

This classic from The Muppet Movie always makes me think of the Elves sailing into the West, so I updated it a little.

lyrics adapted by Benjamin Newman

from "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher

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In Her Mystery

[bnewman]

A hymn to Persephone.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "In the Mystery" by Joel Houston

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I Won't Be Your Ben Kenobi

[bnewman]

My first song based on the Star Wars sequel trilogy, this one's for Luke in The Last Jedi.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono" by Dar Williams

 

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Mgalekgolo

[bnewman]

A song about these guys, also known as "Hunters", one of the enemies from the Halo series.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Baby Beluga" by Raffi

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Pixel Worlds

[bnewman]

As "Paper Worlds" is a tribute to books, here is a tribute to video games in the same spirit.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: and adapted from "Paper Worlds" by Talis Kimberley

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The Robots and the Humans

[bnewman]

The tune is Dar Williams', but if anyone is owed an apology for this song, it's Jonathan Coulton. This song bridges the narrative gap between two of JoCo's songs (both explicitly named) that might not have been intended to take place in the same timeline...

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Christians and the Pagans" by Dar Williams

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Space Weather Hazard Report

[bnewman]

The source song is lovely, but I can't hear the line "hanging in the afterglow of a solar flare" without thinking of space weather and what it can do to a spaceship.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Solar Flare" by Sam Baardman

 

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The stsho Must Go On

[bnewman]

The stsho are an enigmatic alien race in C. J. Cherryh's Chanur series. They are timid, conniving, decorous, and prone to changing personality and gender under stress. A background presence for most of the series, in Chanur's Legacy we finally get to meet them up close. It's surprising how much of the original Queen song survived this process...

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Show Must Go On" by Queen

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Väinämö

[bnewman]

Väinämöinen, or Väinämö for short, is the hero of the Finnish folk epic, the Kalevala. It sounds a little like "bailamos", and once I thought of that, I couldn't unhear it.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Bailamos" by Enrique Iglesias

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When It's 64

[bnewman]

People aren't the only things that turn 64 — computers do too. Will my old software still run on a 64-bit OS?

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "When I'm Sixty-Four" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

 

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The Witch of Agnesi

[bnewman]

The witch of Agnesi is a geometric curve named for a mistranslation — versiera, an Italian word for "curve", could also be read as "adversary", hence "she-devil", hence "witch" — but this song imagines an actual witch who appears when summoned, as in the source song. Considered as the graph of a probability distribution, the "witch" holds the answer to several mathematical riddles, as the characters in the song will discover.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Witch of the Westmoreland" by Archie Fisher

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