So the other day a couple of my coworkers and I went out to eat. While we were eating a background song came on that they had never heard. Of course, they were much younger than I am, so I figured they were not even a thought when the song came out sometime in the 70’s.
I told them the name of the song was, "Stuck in the Middle with You." Well, this did not surprise anyone since those were the words which were sung over and over again.
One of the guys asked who sang it…that is where I drew a blank, I had no idea. Shoot, I usually only remember songs by The Beatles, Chicago, Seals & Crofts and a few of those other golden oldies. All I knew for sure was this song was not done by any of the aforementioned artists.
Now in steps the modern world of technology and more specifically Smart Phones. I asked the guys if they had "Sound Hound" and got blank stares.
I went on to explain that my Android phone has an application called "SoundHound." Do not fret if you are an iPhone/iPod/iPad user. You can get SoundHound in the iTunes store; although it does not appear to be free as it is with Android systems.
All I had to do was click the SoundHound button on my Android’s screen, wait a second and tap the, "What’s that song?" button. After that I waited maybe 15-20 seconds. A screen then opened telling us more than we really wanted to know about that particular song.
It told us, "Stealers Wheel" was the album. It was released in 1973 and was named after the group. The album included that song and it gave a list of all of the other songs found there. You could click on any of the tunes and listen them, and you could purchase the album or just a song or two from the links. All of the songs’ lyrics are also available to you. You could also read a short history about the group, Stealers Wheel. Oh yes, in case you enjoy seeing pictures, like me, you get to see the album cover or click on a link and go to YouTube.com to see the original group perform the song.
It is pretty slick and it only takes a minute to download the app to your phone and only seconds to find the song information.
Naturally, we spent way too long ignoring our lunch and listening to each song that came on in the background seeing if we could trick the app. Guess what… we never did. SoundHound found each of the songs we tried and again gave a cluster of information about each one.
Of course, sometimes even my brain can work faster than a computer, yeah hard to believe. But one of my favorite songs came on at the end of our trials, and I quoted, "Blackbird", "The Beatles", "The White Album" and "1968", before they got the answers from SoundHound. I can sing the entire song too if you would like…OK never mind.