Use found for Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman

A researcher has discovered Why Loneliness Feels Cold and Sins Feel Dirty. There's a write up of his research in Scientific American at the link.



The researcher Zhong says,

"I came across this popular 1970s song on YouTube called Lonely This Christmas written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. It goes, “It'll be lonely this Christmas, lonely and cold, it'll be cold so cold, without you to hold.” It just occurred to me that maybe what the song describes is more than a metaphor but a real psychological connection between loneliness and coldness."

He goes on to show that loneliness does indeed make people feel cold, moral issues make people feel dirty, and belonging to an out-group (e.g. "non white") brings together larger mixed groups than belonging to an in-group (e.g. "Latino"). Interesting stuff, and worth the read.

I wish he had asked people from hot countries about "the cold shoulder" and people from non-Christian cultures about the "immaculate" (unstained) soul, though. I would love to know if this is universal or just picked up along with such trivia as Christmas being red and green.

The unbelievably popular British hitmakers Chinn and Chapman provided a soundtrack of the seventies with 19 hits in the UK Top 40. Nineteen!

I'd like to get the following Chinn and Chapman songs out of my head.

Suzi Quatro – Devil Gate Drive
Sweet - Blockbuster
Mud – Tiger Feet
Toni Basil - Mickey
And approximately 14 more.


(Seen via Velcro City)

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I just read this comment. The blog post is interesting – Roger Ebert on the death of irony and the dawn of credulity - but the comment is fascinating.

"I'm just afraid that we've transformed this culture, collapsed it down to a xylophone shape, and nobody has the time, the inclination, the temperament, even the desire to see what lives within those folds."

Isn't that true, though? The world has collapsed to a xylophone shape. Not, as many people have assumed in the past, an accordion, or the bellows thereof.