writes songs celebrating anything and everything about science, from evolution to the solar system. Eleanor Harris caught up with him at rehearsals for his Tremendous Journey concert this month.
What is Tremendous Journey about?
The concert will feature 15 songs about the science of life and evolution. It’s a shorter version of my “science oratorio”, Lifetime. We open with a song called Mr Darwin, which tells the story of his historic voyage aboard the Beagle. Then there is Selfish Gene, a song referring to Richard Dawkins’s work, and Living Light, Queen Bee, Bacteria and Taxonomy.
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Video: See David Haines perform Mr Darwin and Taxonomy
I’ve never had a biology lesson, so I chose to cover life sciences in Lifetime. It’s a great way to learn new stuff. New Scientist gives me ideas for songs a lot of the time and I’ve gathered a big collection of popular science books. One danger is that because a few of the books are quite old, some of the facts I’ve incorporated into my songs are out of date.
Does that mean you have had to update some of your songs?
My song Planets was called Nine Planets when I wrote it 20 years ago. Five years ago I briefly rewrote it as Ten Planets when it was thought that Sedna was the 10th planet. And then of course it was decided that the dwarf planets, including Pluto, wouldn’t count any more, so I had to make it Eight Planets. I was so amused by all this that I wrote a new section of the song about how Pluto was kicked out, and also a description of the Kuiper and asteroid belts.
Who do you write your songs for?
I don’t have a target audience in mind. I write songs about science the way other people write love songs. I get so emotionally moved by science, it’s like being in love, so I write them with passion. I don’t compromise just because I know that children are going to be performing a song. If anything I might put in tricky words, because kids love that.
I’m not under any illusion that I can really teach people about science through songs. My aim is to celebrate science. I want to get other people to realise what an incredible fund of knowledge and curiosity and fun it is. And I think it works. When people sing about it they become curious and ask what it all means.
“When people sing songs about science they become curious and ask what it all means”
You do hear people say “I’m just not interested in science.” If you’re not interested in science what are you interested in? People should understand that things aren’t as black and white as they might think. If you can sneak up on them from behind by putting it in the form of a song, that’s a really good way of doing it.
Are science songs a difficult sell?
People think the songs are going to be high-tech plinky-plonk music with lots of synthesisers, but they’re actually very lyrical, like ballads or rock or pop songs. When other people write science songs they go for the pastiche approach and make it sound, I’m afraid to say, like Gilbert and Sullivan. I come from a classical music background and I love a good melody, so I write really catchy tunes. The music is more sophisticated than the other stuff churned out for children.
What’s next?
I’ve just begun a songwriter residency at – the Royal Botanic Gardens in London. I spent two days at Kew and one at the Millennium Seed Bank with their top scientists and archivists. Now I have to write a song encapsulating their work. I’m enjoying the challenge.
I’m talking to the Transplant Trust about an oratorio about organ donation and transplantation. It’s an issue I feel strongly about: I feel it’s a public duty for everyone to register for organ donation. At some point I’d also like to write a song about what science is. People think that science deals in solid facts which are never going to change, and that’s the opposite of what science is. I want to try and put that into a popular form.
Video: See David Haines perform Mr Darwin and Taxonomy
- The concert will take place at the Stables Theatre, Milton Keynes, UK, on 24 October