Nick Cave: Higgs Boson Blues

I have listened to lots of songs by Nick Cave because he's been among the most favorite musicians of my former German Australian roommate (this is how he moved in except that I didn't have that much furniture yet). ;-) Your humble correspondent only became fond of his duet with Kylie Minogue that Oscar Pistorius apparently picked as his role model. The "pure" Cave & Bad Seeds songs are too wild for me.

At any rate, Sean Carroll noticed an interesting new Spring 2012 song, Higgs Boson Blues.



Sean's version of the video contains the lyrics rather than a live concert.

Be careful: it's 8 minutes long. Why Cave recorded a song about a new particle that hadn't yet been found in the Swiss cave is a controversial question. He claims that he was just looking for curiosities and exotic Wikipedia entries. I must appreciate that the song was created before the official July 4th, 2012 discovery.




However, there are also rumors that the song was supposed to blast Miley Cyrus, a blonde actress. Nick Cave vehemently denies these reports. But it may be hard for him to deny the claims given the verse Miley Cyrus floats in a swimming pool in Tallulah Lake (yes, this finding resulted from my original research).

At any rate, if you haven't listened to the song from the fresh new Push the Sky Away album yet, you must be curious what mathematical aspects of the Higgs mechanism are going to be emphasized in the song. Sadly, I must tell you that when you say the LHC in front of Nick Cave, he is thinking about similar things as Penny (these two people have very similar perspectives!) who was originally chosen as Leonard's companion for a visit to the LHC even though Sheldon Cooper has dreamed about such a visit for decades. ;-)