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Personalities

Meet Lynda Williams – ‘the physics chanteuse’

10 Feb 2000 Matin Durrani

Cosmic Cabaret
Lynda Williams
$20.00

Originally inspired by the astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan, Lynda Williams began singing about her favourite subject – physics – in 1995. At the time she was a graduate physics student at San Francisco State University and realized that the best way to combine her interests in science and art was to become a science entertainer. She now performs her songs as part of a “cabaret-style musical act” and has even become a minor celebrity on the physics-conference circuit, where she creates a customized “cabaret show of songs and repartee”, usually performed at the event’s banquet. Williams has also taken her material out into US schools to get pupils turned on to science.

Here she brings together 15 of her “greatest hits” on one CD, which also includes photographs, lyric sheets, media cuttings and movies. The music has what can best be described as a variety of styles, ranging from cheesy Motown (“Quantum Jump” and “Annie Jump Cannon”) and 1980s electronic pop (“The Player”) to the jazz-infused “S ‘Wonderful”, which tackles the subject of supersymmetry and the demise of the Superconducting Super Collider. My favourite is “Einstein’s Angels”, sung to the theme tune of 1970s TV show Charlie’s Angels.

There are also covers of classic pop hits, including Madonna’s “Material Girl” reworked as “Hi-Tek Girl”. The lyrics would not win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but then neither will the originals.

Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me
I think they’re passe
If they can’t talk about quantum theory
I just walk away.
I like geeks and I like nerds
At least they see the light.
Science is my first true love
Cuz it excites my mind.

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