Song of the Day 3/14: Kate Bush, “Pi”

Pi Day, so called because in American notation it looks like the first three digits of the mathematical constant (in Europe today is 14/3), is a bona fide holiday, designated by Congress in 2009 in hope of spurring interest in math and science (don’t tell MAGAts, they’ll try to get it repealed).

It didn’t exactly work. Media notices Pi Day but treats it as if there’s an “e” involved, so we get lots of recipes for pies – so many that an occasional savory one pops up. But rarely do you see an article about the number.

And so it is with songs. There are lots of songs about pies, but Kate Bush wrote the only one about π for her 2005 double LP “Aerial.” The lyrics are mostly her recitation of the number to more than a hundred decimal places.

When the album was released, she told the BBC,

I really like the challenge of singing numbers, as opposed to words, because numbers are so unemotional as a lyric to sing and it was really fascinating singing that. Trying to sort of, put an emotional element into singing about…a seven, you know, and you really care about that nine.

I find it fascinating that there are people who actually spend their lives trying to formulate pi; so the idea of this number, that, in a way is possibly something that will go on to infinity and yet people are trying to pin it down and put their mark on and make it theirs…

If you’re following along on your calculator, you’ll notice that there’s a glitch in Bush’s calculations. She’s accurate through the first 78 decimal places, but then skips ahead to the 101st numeral. The song finishes at the 137th. She could always write sequels – computers have calculated it to more than 100 trillion decimal places and still haven’t found stretches that match.