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==Covers==
==Covers==
[[Aidan Moffat]] of [[Arab Strap]] fame and ex member of [[The Delgados]] [[Alun Woodward]] covered Katie Melua’s Nine Million Bicycles</ref>
[[Aidan Moffat]] of [[Arab Strap]] fame and ex member of [[The Delgados]] [[Alun Woodward]] covered Katie Melua’s Nine Million Bicycles</ref>

In addition to Singhs revision of the track, legendary social commentator Luke Harrow also hastened to add that '9 Million Bicycles' is also far from a hard 'fact', merely an approximate estimation based on a typical average taken from the Chinese National Consensus. To put a definite number on the quantity of bicycles in beijing would be, as Harrow put it, 'Twattish'.


==Track listing==
==Track listing==

Revision as of 12:47, 28 May 2009

"Nine Million Bicycles"
Song
B-side"Market Day in Guernica", "Stardust"

"Nine Million Bicycles" is a song written and produced by Mike Batt for the singer Katie Melua's second album, Piece by Piece. It was released as the album's first single in September 2005 (see 2005 in music) and reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Melua's first top five hit as a solo artist. (She had previously participated in Band Aid 20's 2004 number-one charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?"). It was a finalist for The Record of the Year prize, losing to "You Raise Me Up" by Westlife.

About the record

According to Melua, the inspiration for the song came from when her interpreter during her time in Beijing[1], China, was showing her and her manager, Mike Batt, around the city. The interpreter gave them information about Beijing, including that there are supposedly nine million bicycles in the city. Batt wrote a song based around the title "Nine Million Bicycles" upon his return to England two weeks later, and it was one of the last songs to be recorded for Piece by Piece. Adrian Brett, who played the ethnic flutes on Batt's album Caravans (1978), contributed to the song; an ocarina was used for the low sounds, and a Chinese bamboo flute for the high sounds.[2]

Melua said that she liked the song "because it is a simple juxtaposition of a trivial idea ("Nine Million Bicycles") against an important idea ("I will love you till I die")".[2] The website indieLondon named it one of the "highlights" of Piece by Piece, describing it as "genuinely sweet ... The meandering blasts of flute that weave their way throughout lend the song a Chinese feel and make it quite enticing."[3]

The single's video, directed by Kevin Godley, features Melua being dragged across the floor through a variety of settings, including a brief shot of the Summer Palace (Yiheyuan, Chinese: 颐和园/頤和園) in Beijing, until she returns to a picnic in a park with her friends.

The song was featured prominently in a high-profile radio and television advertising campaign for the Slovenian cell-phone operator Mobitel.

Scientific error in lyrics

On September 30, 2005, an article appeared in The Guardian newspaper in which physicist Simon Singh humorously corrected the song's lyrics. Singh said that with the song Melua "demonstrates a deep ignorance of cosmology and no understanding of the scientific method", and objected to its second verse, where the song's protagonist "[contrasts] such guesswork with her own confidence in her blossoming long-term love":[4]

We are 12 billion light-years from the edge,
That's a guess — no-one can ever say it's true,
But I know that I will always be with you

Singh interpreted the first lyric as a statement that the observable universe was twelve billion years old, which he said was incorrect; according to "the very latest data", the universe was actually 13.7 billion years old. He added, "the next line in the song is unforgivable. To say that the age of the universe is "a guess" is an insult to a century of astronomical progress. The age of the universe is not just "a guess", but rather it is a carefully measured number that is now known to a high degree of accuracy". He wrote replacement lyrics which he believed would, if used, remedy his concerns:[4]

We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe,
that's a good estimate with well-defined error bars,
Scientists say it's true, but acknowledge that it may be refined,
and with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you

Singh's statements received moderate coverage in the media, and led Batt to submit a response to The Guardian in which he defended his right to poetic license.[5] Melua agreed to re-record the song's second verse with Singh's proposed lyrics, though she said she encountered difficulty fitting in all of the syllables.[6] The revised version, which omitted the line "Scientists say it's true, but acknowledge that it may be refined", premiered on the radio show The Today Programme on October 15.[7] Melua said that she felt embarrassed by the error in the song, particularly given that she had been a member of her school's astronomy club. Singh himself later said he intended his article to be "to some extent ... tongue-in-cheek", but that he also wanted to defend principles in cosmology "that are on much firmer ground". He added that he believed his response to the song's lyrics had helped introduce cosmology to a wider audience and said that "the writing of the original article was probably the most productive hour of my career".[5]

In fact, Singh also made an error. While the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is much greater (about 46 billion light years[8]) because of the fast expansion of the universe.

The incident recalls a similar one that occurred over a century previous, when Charles Babbage wrote to Alfred Tennyson suggesting that his "otherwise beautiful poem" The Vision of Sin contained an error, see Babbage#Eccentricities.

Covers

Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap fame and ex member of The Delgados Alun Woodward covered Katie Melua’s Nine Million Bicycles</ref>

Track listing

  1. "Nine Million Bicycles" (Mike Batt) – 3:15
  2. "Market Day in Guernica" (Batt) – 4:02
  3. "Stardust" (Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish) – 4:10

Charts

Chart (2005/2006) Peak Position[1][2][3]
Belgium Singles Chart 4
France Singles Chart 56
Germany Singles Chart 31
Ireland Singles Chart 11
Italian Singles Chart 17
Netherlands Singles Chart 2
Norway Singles Chart 10
Poland Singles Chart 1
Switzerland Singles Chart 43
Taiwan Singles Chart 1 (1 week)
UK Singles Chart 5
Europe Official Top 100 12

Other appearances

Credits

Personnel
Production
  • Producers – Mike Batt
  • Engineer – Steve Sale
  • Arranger – Mike Batt

Notes

  1. ^ What's Music Record 1993, no. WS-2052, in Mandarin
  2. ^ a b "Nine Million Bicycles". KatieMelua.com. Retrieved September 28, 2006.
  3. ^ Foley, Jack and Hollie, Carnevale. "Katie Melua — Piece By Piece". indieLondon. Retrieved April 9, 2006.
  4. ^ a b Singh, Simon. "Katie Melua's bad science". The Guardian. September 30, 2005. Retrieved April 9, 2006.
  5. ^ a b Singh, Simon. "The pop star controversy". Symmetry. February 2006. Volume 03, Issue 01. Retrieved April 9, 2006.
  6. ^ Orr, James. "How Katie put the science back into songwriting". The Daily Telegraph. October 16, 2005. Retrieved July 8, 2008.
  7. ^ "Nine Million Bicycles" segment of The Today Programme. Bbc.co.uk. Broadcast date: October 15, 2005. Retrieved April 9, 2006.
  8. ^ Lineweaver, Charles (2005). "Misconceptions about the Big Bang". Scientific American. Retrieved 2007-03-05. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
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