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Volume up, kiddos. We’re about to sing every one of these music facts to you!

40 Unbelievable Facts About Pop Music and the Weirdos Who Make It

October 07, 2024

Before reading these wild music facts, search “hip hop instrumentals” on YouTube and make sure to read along to the beat. We wrote each of them with a rhythm of about 90 beats per minute, which was the most common tempo for 1980s and 1990s hip hop.

If only we wrote them with rhymes in mind. Looks like this list will have more of a slam poetry vibe than a rap one. We’ll work on our rhymes for next time, we promise!

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40

If you thought Wu-Tang was for the children, you should see what Luda is up to.

CRACKED LUDACRIS FOUNDED KIDNATION. KidNation's mission is the betterment of kids' physical and mental health. They use music videos with kids rapping positive pieces of advice to provide a fun, safe, and educational media platform. — Kid Nation / Variety

39

DUDL 5 6 110 a 4 2 A B C D E F 6 5 7200000 ABCDEF 19 5 A T E E D L B 5 3 . II KE$HA had a SAT score of 1500. Back in school, Kesha scored a nearly-perfect 1500 on her SAT. However, she chose to pursue a musical career rather than attend college. CRACKED.COM — 24 'Wait-A-Minute-What?' Celeb Facts

38

AT A GLANCE EMINEM Eminem wouldn't let Weird AI parody Lose Yourself in music video form Eminem let Weird AI put parody the song in couch Potato but refused to let him release it as a single or release a music video for it, in order to protect his image. CRACKED.COM — Source: E!

37

We’re pretty sure Dido never once thought Eminem would help launch her music career.

CRACKED EMINEM & DIDO Eminem's Stan uses English singer Dido's single Thank You as the chorus between his dark verses. The 8-minute video featured Dido as Stan's girlfriend, and it helped her album No Angel sell 21 million copies worldwide. KORG — American Songwriter / NME

36

AT A GLANCE KEANU REEVES He was in a Paula Abdel music video. He was in 1991's Rush Rush music, re-imagining James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. — Source: Paula Abdul

35

Grimes

Grimes wrote a song about Dark Souls DARK SOULS The musician has written a song designed to be listened to while playing the notoriously difficult video game. CRACKED.COM — Source: 11 Celebrities With Nerdy Hobbies

34

Meg and Jack White said they were siblings. Then the news found their marriage certificate. And no, they weren't siblings AND married. Jack later explained he thought when band members are relatives instead of lovers, fans care more about the music, not the relationship. CRACKED.COM — Source

33

Fender

The inventor of Fender guitars didn't know how to play them. CRACKED.COM Despite designing the Telecaster and Strato- caster, and inventing the solid-body electric bass guitar, Lawrence Leoni- das Leo Fender was an engineer, not a musician. — Source

32

Emmy

Andy Samberg His music has been nominated for Emmys. A classic Lonely Island tune, Dick in a Box, was nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics in 2007. Motherlover, Shy Ronnie, and Jack Sparrow have also been nominated. CRACKED.COM — Source: Wikipedia

31

OK Go was a pioneer in viral music videos. Their treadmill choreography in 2009's Here It Goes Again was a massive hit that led to their rube goldberg machine video for This Too Shall Pass. With a crew of 60 people, the machine synced up with the song itself and took roughly 60 takes to complete. CRACKED — Source

30

Comedian and actor Steve Martin started playing banjo at age 17. Не has played on several albums, and has won a total of five Grammy awards. FE CRACKED.COM In August 2021, he even went viral on Twitter after post- ing a short video clip of him play- ing. — Source

29

THE MARS VOLTA CRACKED COM At The Drive-In's Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez had a side-project called De Facto. Once ATDI broke-up, De Facto recorded songs that they shopped under the name 'The Mars Volta'. From 2001-2012, they had 6 albums chart worldwide, won a Grammy, and were named Best Prog-Rock Band by Rolling Stone in '08. — Source: Yardbarker

28

WEIRD WORLD Taylor Swift got beat out by a bunch of birds on a Top 50 list. Apparently, an album of the sounds of endangered birds, called Songs of Disappearance, was #3 on Australia's chart of top 50 albums, beating out Taylor Swift. CRACKED.COM — Source

27

PHIL SPELTOR In the 1960s, he produced some of the era's greatest albums by developing a recording formula known as the Wall lofsound Essentially, i

26

Source: Yardbarker

25

Snoop Dogg - Hot Pockets

Celebrity Endorsements Snoop Dogg parodied himself for Hot Pockets. In 2012, Snoop recorded a parody of his hit Drop It Like It's Hot called Pocket Like It's Hot to advertise the microwavable calzone-ish pastry. Не even recorded a full-length music video for it. CRACKED.COM HOT POCKETS — Source: Ad On YouTube

24

MTV was only available in New Jersey when it first launched. CRACKED.COM Only certain cable sub- scribers in NJ were able to watch the new station and the first music video they decided to play, Video Killed The Radio Star, on August 1, 1981.

23

Basquiat was in Blondie's music video for Rapture. Debbie Harry bought Basquiat's first painting for $200. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED COM — Source: Sotheby's

22

The WAP music video spent $100,000 just on Covid testing. Every single person on the shoot had to get tested. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

21

CRACKED VANESSA CARLTON WAS THE QUEEN OF 2002. Her hit single A Thousand Miles and its music video made her world-famous. It remained in the Billboard Top Ten for 41 weeks, went double platinum and charted worldwide. No other song came close. — Source

20

Glee

The cast of Glee has had 207 SONGS on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. That's three times as many as the Beatles. CRACKED.COM — Source

19

Weird Al's song White & Nerdy is his first and only song to reach the Top 10.

It took Weird Al 30 years into his career to get a song in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. CRACKED.COM Al's first and only (so far) top 10 hit was 2006's 'White And Nerdy, off of Straight Outta Lyn- wood, which peaked at #9 on the Hot 100. — Billboard

18

Jay-Z collaborated with a baby on “Glory.”

The youngest person to appear on the Billboard chart was two-days-old. MPORTED ON TION CRACKED.COM Jay-Z included a clip of his daughter Blue Ivy Carter crying at the end of Glory, adding an official credit for the hours-old infant. — People

17

The Candy Man

Sammy Davis Jr thought his iconic song The Candy Man would bomb. His exact words: This record is going straight into the toilet. Not just around the rim, but into the bowl, and it may just pull my whole career down with it. It hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. CRACKED.COM — Source 13 Interesting Facts To Up-Level Our Knowledge Of The World

16

CRACKED CRAZY TOWN'S BUTTERFLY WAS A TRUE ONE-HIT WONDER. This is their only song that ever appeared on the Billboard Hot 100, and it was #1 for 2 weeks in 2001. Other rap/rock nu-metal bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Linkin Park never hit #1, but had much longer, more successful careers. — Source

15

BEHIND-THE-SCENESF FACTS The top-selling album of 2006 was the HSM SOUNDTRACK MUSICAL CRACKED COM It's the first television movie soundtrack to ever hit number one on the Billboard sales charts. It sold 3.7 million copies. Take that, Nickelback! — E Online

14

Man, I’m glad that storm rolled in!

CRACKED THE HELL'S ANGELS PLOTTED TO MURDER MICK JAGGER. In 1969, The Hell's Angels worked security for a Rolling Stones concert. Four people died, and Jagger said he was disgusted by them. Planning to kill him, they approached his Hamptons home by boat, but a freak storm capsized them. They survived, but abandoned their plot. — Reuters / Business Insider

13

Michael Jackson had a pet llama he regularly brought cRauh with him to the studio. When he and Freddie Mercury started WF FNOLYIOOO collaborating, the

12

According to producer/writer Sam Simon, Michael Jackson agreed to do a guest role on The Simpsons on the condition that the script be rewritten to give his character more scenes with Bart. The writers came up with a sleepover. The episode has since been pulled from syndication. CRACKED.COM — Source

11

Ryan Gosling told AJ McLean that Backstreet Boys were never going to make it Before they were famous, the Backstreet Boy and the actor played basketball together daily, but Gosling was a naysayer about the potential of the boy band. CRACKED.COM — Source: Hollywood Reporter

10

MAN BEHIND THE BOY BANDS Lou Pearlman launched the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, O-Town, Aaron Carter, LFO, Take 5, and Innocense, among others. He did it — Source: Hollywood Reporter

9

Backstreet Boys are the best selling boy band in history SORRY NSYNC fans but by the numbers, BSB wins fair and square, with over 100 million albums sold. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source: Sydney Morning Herald

8

LFO: No More.

CRACKED 2/3RDS OF LFO HAVE SUCCUMBED TO CANCER. M LI Devin Lima, a member of the late-'90s boy band LFO, passed away from cancer in November 2018. This was after Rich Cronin, another member of the band, had died from leukemia in 2010, leaving only 1 member out of the 3 who didn't have cancer. — People / BBC

7

50 THE BEATLES 5 FEBRUARY 1962 CRACKED.COM We don't like the sound. Guitar groups are on their way out. -Dick Rowe, head of artists and repertoire at Decca Records. The Beatles then went on to some success, as did rock music in general. — Source

6

THE SUGARHILL GANG SugaHill SH-542-A 33 1/3 RPM OND 112RE-BW) 1977 Chie Music Inc. Music taben Good Times Sylvia Sea. Production others TIME: 11:00 RAPPER'S DELIGHT (Hemard Edwards-Nile Rodgers) CRACKED COM Released on March 25, 1979, King Tim III (Personality Jock) is cited as the first recorded hip hop song, but on Sept 16, 1979, The Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight became the first hip hop single to reach the Billboard Top 40, reach #1 in Canada, and #2 all over Europe, bringing the genre to the mainstream. — Source: thesource

5

The NYC Rap Tour

THE NYC RAP TOUR CRACKED.COM In 1982, some of hip hop's most popular figures, DJ Africa Bambaataa, The Rock Steady Crew, Fab 5 Freddy, and many more, brought the culture across the Atlantic to cities like Paris and London, becoming the very first international hip hop tour. — Source: beats-rhymes

4

CRACKED MUSIC Companies are now using AI to create recommendation feeds on music platforms like SoundCloud and Spotify. This could lead to artists making shorter, snappier songs to reach more people. — Soundcloud / Pitchfork

3

Miley Cyrus

MILEY CYRUS TWERKING AT THE VMAS. VI X 0 MUS AV DS Jose CRACKED Now common in pop music, Miley twerking in 2013 was deemed outrageous in countless articles, and sparked numerous debates about cultural appropriation and hypersexualizing the music industry. — HuffPost

2

Jennifer Connelly

EMBARRASSING EARLY APPEARANCES /-7 - TARRE DOS ..... JENNIFER CONNELLY was a pop musician In Japan Way before standing on docks in Dark City and Requiem for a Dream, Connelly recorded two romantic songs in phonetic Japanese, because of reasons. One of these 1986 songs was even used in a Japanese stereo commercial, which yes, can be found on YouTube. You're welcome. CRACKED.COM — More: 8 Insane Early Roles Famous Actors Don't Want You To See

1

Nelly

CRACKED 2005 WAS LIKE THE EDGE OF A CLIFF FOR NELLY. From 2000 to 2004, Nelly was a mainstay in hip hop and pop music. His first 3 albums went multi platinum, and all hit #1 on Billboard. Then, because of experimental songs and oversaturation, his next 3 albums didn't even go gold, and he completely fell off. — Source

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