One Of Us / Musical Freaks

See also Filk Song, Heavy Mithril, Nerdcore.

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Classical music composers, musicians, and conductors.

• Ludwig van Beethoven was a Mozart fan, and both of them were also fans of George Frederic Handel. Beethoven called him "the master of us all...the greatest composer that ever lived".
• Conductor Arturo Toscanini once saw The Band Concert in the theater and liked the cartoon so much that he asked the projectionist to play it a second time in a row. Another conductor with a love for Disney was Jerome Kern, who said: "Disney has made use of music as a language."
• Frederick Delius was a fan of Richard Wagner.
• Gustav Holst loved Thomas Hardy, and his work Egdon Heath is a musical adaptation of the eponymous fictitious location in The Return of the Native.

Jazz composers and performers

• Miles Davis said about Louis Armstrong: "You know you can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played — I mean even modern. … I love his approach to the trumpet; he never sounds bad. He plays on the beat and you can't miss when you play on the beat — with feeling. That's another phrase for swing."
• Thelonious Monk was an avid fan of Doc Savage, so much that he sometimes kept a magazine in his coat pocket during performances.
• Sun Ra admired Fletcher Henderson and cited Fryderyk Chopin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arnold Schoenberg and Dmitri Shostakovich as his favorite composers. He was very interested in mystic literature, among the occult books by Madame Blavatsky and Henry Dumas, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Alexander Hislop's "The Two Babylons", "The Book Of Oahspe", Afro-American folklore and Egyptian culture. He also had an interest in Walt Disney movies and covered "Pink Elephant On Parade" from Dumbo on the multi-artist compilation Stay Awake.
• Jazz bassist and soul vocalist Thundercat. Apart from the obvious clue in his name, he's released songs called "The Life Aquatic", "Evangelion", and "Lone Wolf and Cub"; and he owns a cat named TRON. The music video for the song about his cat, "Tron Song", features Thundercat wearing Super Saiyan armor and exploding Eric Andre's head by using his mind powers, resulting in a Fatality with Flawless Victory.
• John Zorn is inspired by so many different musicians and musical styles that his album collection consists of literally racks and racks of records. His music is also a highly and unclassifiable eclectic mix of all kinds of genres and he even has side projects with klezmer, Death Metal, Grindcore and/or Japanese rock overtones. Zorn re-interpreted music by Ennio Morricone, Sonny Clark, Ornette Coleman, Claude Debussy, Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, Orlande de Lassus, Alexander Scriabin,..., collaborated with Ornette Coleman and made Concept Albums about authors Mickey Spillane, Marguerite Duras, visual artist Marcel Duchamp, and film director Jean-Luc Godard. He is very interested in the Looney Tunes scores by composer Carl Stalling and described his first musical hero as composer Mauricio Kagel.
• Herbie Hancock has a degree in electrical engineering and was an early adopter of synthesizers and computers in music-making.

Crooners/Chansonniers/Traditional singers

• Bing Crosby adored Louis Armstrong and said: "He was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone."
• Frank Sinatra's big influence was Bing Crosby. He also felt that Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday were among the best singers he ever heard and Holiday in particular "the greatest single musical influence" on him. Vaughan was so good in his ears that it made him consider "slitting his own wrists with a dull razor".
  • Sinatra was also the biggest fan of comedian Don Rickles. The first time the singer attended one of Rickles' shows there was an uneasiness in the room because Sinatra was notorious for his short-fueled temper. Rickles' insult comedy, however, did manage to make Sinatra fall in the aisles with laughter. Thanks to his support Rickles quickly became a popular headline performer in Las Vegas. When Sinatra was asked to perform at Ronald Reagan's second inauguration in 1985 he even stipulated that he wouldn't perform unless Rickles was allowed on stage too.
• Sammy Davis Jr. was a fan of daytime soap operas, particularly the shows produced by the American Broadcasting Company. This led to a cameo appearance on General Hospital and a recurring role as character Chip Warren on One Life to Live, for which he received a Daytime Emmy nomination in 1980. He was also a game show fan, appearing on the ABC version of Family Feud in 1979. He appeared on Tattletales with his third wife Altovise Davis in the 1970s. He made a cameo during an episode of the NBC version of Card Sharks in 1981. He also loved the show Prisoner: Cell Block H. One of his hobbies was photographing.
• Tom Jones is a huge Elvis Presley fan.
• Jacques Brel liked The Marx Brothers so much that his song Le Gaz was inspired by the crowded room scene in A Night at the Opera. He also adored classical music and said it humbled him whenever success went to his head.
• Georges Brassens once wrote a song about comic book character Bécassine. He also transcribed many poems by Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine and Louis Aragon to music and recorded entire concept albums about them.
• Serge Gainsbourg, born as "Ginsburg", changed his name to "Gainsbourg" in homage to the English painter Thomas Gainsborough, whom he admired. He was also influenced by Boris Vian and later in his career he recorded Reggae albums with Rita Marley, wife of Bob Marley, and Sly & Robbie.

Rock artists

• Elvis Presley was apparently a comic book fan, and, as the legend goes, based the capes he wore onstage (and maybe even his hairstyle) on that of Captain Marvel Jr. Recursively, recent comics depict Captain Marvel Jr. as a fan of Elvis himself.
  • He was a huge fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Apparently, he frequently quoted the Nudge Nudge sketch. He also owned a copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and quoted incessantly from this movie, especially the Knights Who Say "Ni" sketch. Michael Palin felt particularly great about this because he was an Elvis fan since his youth.
  • Elvis also loved The Pink Panther and enjoyed imitating Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. He always took reels of this franchise with him when he went on tour.
  • When it came to music, Elvis was probably the biggest Fats Domino fanboy in existence, going so far as to call him "the true King of Rock 'n' Roll".
• Guitar legend Link Wray was known for being a huge TV addict. On top of his addiction: westerns, but mostly Star Trek and the 1960s Batman (1966) (which he made several songs about, including a well-known cover of the theme song.).
• The Beatles:
  • All Beatle members loved early Rock & Roll, especially Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry. They were thrilled to meet their idols in person after they became famous. They all shared a love for Bob Dylan too and put him on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
  • The Beatles grew up with The Goon Show and all loved the work of Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. In fact, they got along really well with their producer, George Martin, because of his work on the Goons' comedy albums. Similarly, Richard Lester was hired as director for their first two features A Hard Day's Night and Help! because he had directed some comedy shorts starring the Goon members.
  • According to rumor, they had considered making a film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings with Stanley Kubrick in 1969. John Lennon liked 2001: A Space Odyssey so much that he claimed in 1968: "I watch it every week."
  • Several people on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in general were artists the Beatles admired: Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando (a throwaway line in The Wild One about a motorbike gang named "the Beatles" inspired their band name), William S. Burroughs, Lenny Bruce, Lewis Carroll, Aleister Crowley, Tony Curtis, Marlene Dietrich, Bob Dylan, W. C. Fields, Carl Jung, Laurel and Hardy, Marilyn Monroe, Edgar Allan Poe, George Bernard Shaw, Terry Southern, Dylan Thomas, Johnny Weissmuller, Mae West, Shirley Temple (apart from George who disliked her), H. G. Wells and Oscar Wilde.
  • John Lennon and Ringo Starr were big fans of the books of Terry Southern. They put him on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band too. Ringo even starred in an adaptation of Southern's book The Magic Christian and wrote down the line "Buy a Terry Southern Book" in the sleeve notes of his 1974 album Goodnight Vienna.
  • Lennon enjoyed Lewis Carroll so much that entire songs were inspired by Alice in Wonderland, for instance "I Am The Walrus" and "Cry Baby Cry". He even put Carroll's face on the album cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Lennon's novel A Spaniard In The Works was also inspired by Carroll and by James Thurber and Ronald Searle. Lennon's favorite painter was Henri Matisse.
  • Lennon admired Frank Zappa and once performed with him in 1971. The recordings were made available on Lennon's Some Time In New York City album and Zappa's Playground Psychotics. Lennon famously said:
  "Wow, I always wanted to meet him. I really, really admire him. (...) He's at least trying to do something different with the form. (...) It's incredible how he has his band as tight as a real orchestra. (...) I'm very impressed by the kind of discipline he can bring to rock that nobody else can seem to bring to it.
  • In a 1980 radio interview Lennon told the interviewer that he still loved watching Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers, which he called "the greatest show he saw in years".
  • Paul McCartney has been a fan of the comic strip Rupert Bear since his youth and even wrote music for an animated adaptation in the 1980s. He also called The Beach Boys Pet Sounds his favorite album of all time and the 1971 concert by Fela Kuti he saw in Nigeria one of the best performances he ever saw in his life. His favorite painter is René Magritte. In fact, the Apple logo was inspired by Magritte's painting of "The Son Of Man".
  • The Beatles were also fans of Monty Python, but George Harrison's adoration went further than the others. Apparently, he saw the very first Monty Python episode while the Beatles were doing "Let It Be" and the recording session had been all chaotic and George was depressed — but watching Monty Python made him feel like that the spirit of fun and whimsy that used to be in the Beatles had been reborn in Python. He wrote a letter to the BBC that night, begging them to keep Python on the air. ... Later, he befriended the Pythons, and when their producer pulled out two days before filming on Monty Python's Life of Brian was about to start, George put up the money himself. But even though they were all friends, according to Michael Palin, sometimes George would drive them a little crazy by sometimes quoting Python sketches in an effort to get them to "do" the sketch with him. Michael Palin even claims that sometimes George Harrison, who always loved the "Lumberjack" sketch, would use the alias "Jack Lumber" while traveling.
  • George Harrison also did walk-on parts in Eric Idle's post-Python work, Rutland Weekend Television, and in the The Rutles movie. He went on record claiming that it was the most faithful Biopic about the Beatles he ever saw, despite it being a comedy. He often quoted lines from it during interviews.
  • Harrison's favorite film of all time was Mel Brooks' The Producers. Peter Sellers got hold of an early print for him before it had a UK release, and he showed it constantly to guests at Friar Park. In Harrison's song "Horse to the Water" (1974) he even quotes directly from it:
  Some people sail through life, but he has struck a reef.
  • Harrison was also totally into traditional Indian music, exemplified by the work of his personal friend Ravi Shankar. His debut album, Wonderwall Music is almost entirely made of sitar instrumentals.
  • Harrison wrote his last letter to Mike Myers, saying how he enjoyed the Austin Powers movies and asked if he could give him a Mini Me doll. By Myers' account, he got the letter the day George died.
• The Rolling Stones: All band members are enormous fans of Afro-American Blues musicians. They covered many songs by these artists and brought them under the attention of their own rock lovin' audience. Even their band name was inspired by the line like a rolling stone from Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy". When Waters died in 1984 they sent a laurel wreath to the funeral.
  • Brian Jones was very interested in World Music and recorded an album with a Moroccan folk group, Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka, which would be the only solo album released during his lifetime.
  • Keith Richards considers Chuck Berry the man who inspired him to learn how to play guitar.
  • Back in the 1960s The Stones considered filming A Clockwork Orange with themselves in the starring roles. The project was scrapped and when Kubrick made his famous version it was decided that they couldn't top that.
• John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, started out his musical training as a "band geek" of sorts, playing principal horn in the Middlesex Youth Symphony when he was a kid. In some early interviews with the band, Entwistle still cited classical composers like Wagner when asked about his favorite musicians.
  • Pete Townshend also seems to be a big fan of animation, both Western Animation as well as Anime.
  • Roger Daltrey was a big Elvis Presley fan as a kid and has at least once mentioned that he's a bit of a history buff. He's also a fan of model railways, evidenced when he and Rod Stewart donated money to a English model railway club in Ashford, Kent after their show was vandalised.
• Ronnie Spector is a fan of Jeopardy! and expressed amusement on social media when she was a question subject on a October 2021 episode.
• Frank Zappa was a huge geek!
  • The first record Zappa loved as a teen was Ionisation by the 20th-century classical composer Edgard Varèse, whom he considered to be his musical mentor. He even asked for- and received- a direct phone call with Varèse from his parents for his 18th birthday. When he called Varèse's wife informed the young boy that her husband was in Brussels for the World Fair of 1958, promised Zappa that he would call him back. Varèse did and sent Zappa a personal letter afterward, which Zappa framed and hung in his house. Sadly, the two would never meet each other in person.
  • Zappa felt that the dissonant sounds of 20th century composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Anton Webern, Maurice Ravel, Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, Alban Berg, Conlon Nancarrow,... sounded far more adventurous, exciting, interesting and versatile than composers of earlier centuries. An opinion most general fans of classical music, who prefer harmonies and melodies, wouldn't share. Certainly not his fellow teenagers in the 1950s. Zappa would play Varèse for all visitors that came by his house. Most people would flee after hearing it, but those who didn't were, in Zappa's own words: "people you could have a conversation with." One of them was his high school buddy Captain Beefheart, with whom Zappa shared a love for horror B-movies and old Blues and Doo-wop records which they would play the whole night through.
    • Zappa's passion for cheap B-movies, especially monster movies, went far. He referenced a lot of these movies in his lyrics and song titles, including "Cheepnis" from Roxy & Elsewhere. He even gave one of his sons, Ahmet, the middle name Rodan, in reference to Rodan. This also explains his adoration of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He and the MST3K crew were actually in talks of making a movie together before he died. They also referenced Zappa a lot during their riffs, and dedicated episode 523 to his memory.
    • Zappa's favorite guitarist of all time was Johnny "Guitar" Watson and he considered "Three Hours Past Midnight" his favorite single of all time. He and Watson later became good friends and Watson even recorded tracks on several of Zappa's albums.
    • Zappa's passion for Doo-wop was so strong that he recorded a straight Homage to the genre, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, in a time period when this music was considered to be old-fashioned, unhip and definitely not the kind of music his Avant-Garde Music fans would like at first. Talk about an Audience-Alienating Premise that also shows his absolute dedication to something he loved!
  • Zappa was also digging Outsider Music long before the genre even became popular. He liked Tiny Tim, called The Shaggs "better than The Beatles" and made sure that unique musicians such as Wild Man Fischer and Captain Beefheart got their own albums to record in excellent studio quality. He also gave them a lot of attention among his fans and practically launched their notability.
  • Zappa was also a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Beavis and Butt-Head, Ren & Stimpy and The Simpsons, which he watched religiously during the final years of his life. He voiced the Pope in a Ren and Stimpy episode called "Powdered Toast Man" and wanted to guest star in The Simpsons too, but became too ill to record his part.
  • Just the fact that he printed a list with influences on his music in the sleeve of his debut album Freak Out should speak for itself. Though not all the influences are meant to be positive ^note  The inclusion of John Wayne and Elvis Presley were added because his hatred for them was an inspiration on his work others were definitely artists whose work he admired. Among them a lot of classical composers, jazz, blues artists, doo-wop artists, but also people like Tiny Tim, Ravi Shankar, Salvador Dalí, Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and writers such as Jules Feiffer, Robert Sheckley, Cordwainer Smith, Bram Stoker, Theodore Sturgeon and James Joyce. Because although he claimed not to read books several people who knew Zappa noticed his eclectic language use and knowledge about musical topics revealed that he did read a lot. In a poll, Zappa said he would bring the collected works of science fiction author Cordwainer Smith to a deserted island with him. In "Being Frank" Nigey Lennon also revealed that Zappa had read every novel by Franz Kafka, even his most obscure titles. This would also explain why Zappa advised all his fans to read a copy of Kafka's short story "In the Penal Colony" before listening to the final track of his album We're Only in It for the Money.
• It's not a coincidence that the Doctor Who theme is heard in Pink Floyd's "One of These Days" from Meddle. The band would also frequently interrupt recording sessions to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus and their royalties helped fund Monty Python and the Holy Grail as a tax shelter. Keyboardist Richard Wright, along with John Entwistle of The Who mentioned on this page, was also what we would now call a "band geek" as a fan of classical and jazz music who once expressed a desire to have a symphony of his performed in the Royal Albert Hall — though that's not to say he didn't also enjoy works such as Talking Heads' Remain in Light. Drummer Nick Mason mentioned in his autobiography that he and bandmate Roger Waters nicknamed a particularly annoying (and apparently hostile) light machine they used in their stage show 'The Dalek'.
• Captain Beefheart used to listen to a lot of blues artists along with his high school buddy Frank Zappa. He even modeled his voice after Howlin' Wolf. Beefheart was also amazed by the skill and stage antics of jazz musician Roland Kirk. As a painter, Beefheart drew influence from Franz Kline, Salvador Dalí and Vincent van Gogh. When he visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam he looked at the sun and was actually disappointed that it didn't look as bright as on Van Gogh's paintings.
• Marc Bolan, the elfin pre-Bowie glam god of T. Rex fame, was a notorious Fantasy lover, who actually forced his original drummer to change his name to Steve Peregrin Took. He was also a massive Marvel fanboy, namedropping Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer
• Rock icon and sex symbol Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, was a huge bookworm from an early age and began writing in earnest during his adolescence. He was inspired by the writings of several philosophers and poets. He was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose views on aesthetics, morality, and the Apollonian and Dionysian duality would appear in his conversation, poetry, and songs. Some of his formative influences were Plutarch's Parallel Lives and the works of the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose style would later influence the form of Morrison's short prose poems. He was also influenced by William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Baudelaire, Bertolt Brecht, Molière, Franz Kafka, Honoré de Balzac, and Jean Cocteau, along with most of the French existentialist philosophers. At UCLA he studied the related fields of theater, film, and cinematography. He self-published two separate volumes of his poetry in 1969.
  • Apparently, Morrison was also a big Peanuts fan. As recounted in this interview, when Morrison found out that one of his acquaintances knew Christopher Shea, who played Linus in the early animated shows, Morrison invited Shea to a Doors concert and met him backstage.
• David Bowie was a fan of Frank Zappa and Jacques Brel, whose "Amsterdam" he covered on Pin Ups. His love for Bob Dylan was so strong that he wrong "Song For Bob Dylan" on his album Hunky Dory. He was one of the the first mainstream artists to embrace the internet, releasing a single for download; indeed, his official website also served as an ISP in the early days. He was also fond of Japanese culture and had demonstrated surprisingly insightful knowledge of Japanese politics and philosophy in interviews, and included several songs from his then-latest album on the game Omikron: The Nomad Soul, as well as appearing as a character in the game twice.
  • Bowie was also the earliest Velvet Underground fan ever! He got hold of a copy of The Velvet Underground & Nico before the album was even officially released and loved it. Later, when Lou Reed's solo career wasn't going anywhere he produced his second album Transformer, which practically became Reed's most acclaimed record. Bowie also brought attention to Brian Eno and Iggy Pop by collaborating with them and producing Iggy's albums The Idiot and Lust for Life, which brought them to the attention of a much bigger audience.
• Later in life, Lou Reed was a huge Apple fanboy.
• Iggy Pop is a massive James Brown fan and was very much inspired by Brown's stage act. The song "Lust For Life" from Lust for Life also has references to novels by William S. Burroughs.
• Both the band names of Soft Machine and Steely Dan were inspired by novels by William S. Burroughs.
• Radiohead, alternative rock weirdos, made a list of their favorite (or at least Jonny's favorite) video games in a blog entry on their website. Among those games are Half-Life, GoldenEye (1997), ICO, and the indie darling Cave Story.
  • Not to mention the Greenwood brothers love for Astro Boy. Both have worn shirts with the character on it and Jonny has an Astroboy sticker on one of his guitars
  • Jonny is also a huge contemporary classical music nerd, drawing influences from such composers as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Krzysztof Penderecki. This shows in his scores for movies such as There Will Be Blood.
• Tom Morello has made cameos in Star Trek: Voyager (in the episode "Good Shepherd") and Star Trek: Insurrection, as well as Iron Man, which also features his guitar tracks on the soundtrack.
  • He also studied Political Science at Harvard and works out the settings of his effect pedals using graphs and charts. He is quite possibly the geekiest guitarist to ever rock out a stadium...
• Brian May, the lead guitarist of Queen, was ranked as the 39th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone. In 2007 he received a Ph.D. in astrophysics with a thesis titled "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud." He allegedly did all the work for himself, because he didn't want an "honorary degree" — he wanted to finish the doctorate he'd put aside when his hobby (the band) suddenly became profitable.
  • Queen was once known as the "best-educated band in rock", with each member holding a college diploma. To elaborate: in addition to Brian's studies in astrophysics, bass player John Deacon holds a degree in electrical engineering (which he famously applied to build a practice amp for Brian out of an old speaker and odd bits of trashed circuitry), Roger Taylor studied dentistry, and Freddie had a background in art, which he applied to the band when he designed the Queen crest (appears on several of their '70s albums, but probably best displayed on the covers for A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races (by the way: both titles are references to The Marx Brothers films, which again shows off their geekiness.)
  • In another mark of geekiness, during the band's performance on Saturday Night Live, Brian May wore a Frogger T-shirt.
• Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead was originally a classical music composition major at Mills College, studying with avant-garde composer Luciano Berio as his teacher and minimalist pioneer Steve Reich as a fellow student. He supposedly gave that up for rock after a traumatic experience listening to Gustav Mahler's Sixth Symphony while under the influence of LSD. Even so, he claimed his bass-playing style was more influenced by Johann Sebastian Bach than by blues or R&B.
• Maybe not a huge surprise that They Might Be Giants are a little geeky, but they have a suite of bonus tracks on one album which are all about the Planet of the Apes films.
  • "The sun is a mass of incandescent gas"? Note that it was changed to "The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma", to reflect the change in scientific consensus.
  • The music video for 'Experimental Film' was a Homestar Runner cartoon.
• Charles Gillingham of Counting Crows has a Wikipedia account.
• Various members of the post-rock group Mogwai can be seen in various points in a documentary about the recording of their 5th album playing on Nintendo DS, and one member can be seen with a Asuka Langley sticker on his laptop.
• GACKT, J-rock artist, voice actor, and real-life Bishōnen is a huge fan of Mobile Suit Gundam. He once managed to swing an article about building Gunpla in a music magazine and led a massive audience of screaming teenage girls in a chant of "Sieg Zeon" after reciting Gihren's speech at Garma's funeral.
  • Not to mention his song Metamorphose has cover art that is directly from Mobile Suit Gundam. Not all that surprising as it was written for the Zeta Gundam Compilation Movies.
    • One can only imagine how he reacted to doing the music video for it.
    • And that he was present for the unveiling of the new life-sized Gundam statue in Japan.
    • His single "Ai Senshi" is the title song for Gundam vs Gundam Next.
  • He's also a fan of Kamen Rider, and in addition to penning "Journey Through the Decade" for Decade, he portrayed Joji Yuki, AKA Riderman in the Decade movie All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker. And he performed the theme for that, too.
  • It is also a fact that GACKT voiced Genesis, one of the main characters of Crisis Core. The character's appearance was even based off him.
    • He also sung the theme songs "Redemption" and "Longing" for Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, as well as physically appearing in the special ending as Genesis. This would make him the first real person to ever appear in a Final Fantasy game.
    • Gackt is, obviously, well known in Japan for being a fan of the Final Fantasy series. He even refers to Squall Leonhart as "Gackt 2".
    • Although many fans mistakenly believe Squall is based off Gackt, Squall's design actually predates Gackt's shift to that style of dressing. Squall is in fact based on River Phoenix.
  • When Internet Co. was making the Vocaloid Gackpoid out of his voice, they decided they needed a picture for the mascot character (which was standard for the Japanese Vocaloids). Kentarou Miura, who made the manga Berserk, was hired. Gackt was apparently such a fan of Berserk that he specifically requested to get another copy of the pictures even though he'd be away for filming at the time. (Ironically, Miura was willing to offer free service because he liked Nico Nico Douga that much.)
  • Besides Final Fantasy, he and his songs have appeared in a number of games, including Bujingai, Dragon Nest, Samurai Warriors 3, pachinko games Gladiator and Bounty Killer, as well as the Japanese commercials for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. There is also a dog tag in Metal Gear Solid 2 with Gackt's name on it.
  • Not only did he appear in Bujingai, he provided the voice of the main character, did all of the motion capture for their ridiculous Wuxia swordfighting stunts, and helped to flesh out the setting and story himself. It's basically Gackt: The Game.
  • He's also a self-proclaimed fan of Berserk and was picked by Kentaro Miura himself to voice in the commercial promoting the new OVAs for the series.
• Buckethead, while rarely vocal about himself, is known to be an avid video gamer, comic book fan, Star Wars fan, horror movie geek and Giant Robo enthusiast. He's also composed music for Mortal Kombat: The Movie, recorded a special (and insane) solo for his song "Jordan", when it was included in the second Guitar Hero game, and a remix of one of his songs also appears in the latest Twisted Metal game.
• Super Junior's Kyuhyun is an avid gamer of Starcraft, so much so that his bandmates nicknamed him "GameGyu". Heck, that's even his Twitter username!
  • Heechul is also a big fan of Starcraft and many of his outfits are based on videogame characters.
  • Eunhyuk has all Dragon Ball manga in his room and also likes One Piece. He has been using a meme as his Twitter avatar for quite some time now.
• Speaking of Dragon Ball, Big Bang's GDragon has a Dragon Ball tattooed to his collarbone.
• Frank Ocean is an avid gamer; track titles from his first mixtape include Soul Calibur, Metal Gear Solid and GoldenEye. The mixtape itself opens with a track called "Street Fighter", which even contains the menu selection music, and his first studio album opened to the sounds of a PlayStation booting up.
  • He also references Majin Buu on, appropriately enough, the song "Pink Matter".
  • He is also a massive movie buff, having posted a list of his 100 favorite movies, which includes the works of Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, and Stanley Kubrick.
• The title of The Orb's groundbreaking dance single "A Huge Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld" is actually a fairly literal description of the Blake's 7 episode "Ultraworld".
  • They got the name from a BBC Sci-Fi Sound Effects LP which used that description for one of its noises (which originally came from the Blake's 7 episode in question).
• Tom Waits was inspired to begin his more avant-garde style career since the album Swordfishtrombones after listening to Captain Beefheart. He is also such a fan of Frank Sinatra that the album cover of The Heart of Saturday Night directly references In the Wee Small Hours. He also collaborated with author William S. Burroughs on his album The Black Rider.
• Kurt Cobain listened to many alternative rock bands before Nirvana became famous and made it his duty to give these groups a shout-out now and then, so that they got more attention from the mainstream. Among the bands and artists he liked were The Pixies (Cobain: "Without them Nirvana wouldn't exist."), Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Daniel Johnston, PJ Harvey, The Stooges, Sex Pistols (The title of Nevermind is a homage to Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols), The Shaggs, The Breeders, The Vaselines, Bad Brains, The Raincoats, Sonic Youth, Boredoms, Swans, Kleenex, The Slits, Lead Belly, Mudhoney, Beat Happening, Butthole Surfers, Public Image Ltd., David Bowie, Wipers, Mazzy Star, Shonen Knife, Diesel ^note  The Dutch band, not the other bands by that name. Cobain said in an interview that if he really had to do just straight rock, he'd do it like "Sausalito Summernight" by the aforementioned Diesel ...
  • Cobain also loved the works of William S. Burroughs and struck a friendship with the author. It was, in fact, Burroughs who introduced Cobain to Lead Belly which gave us the marvelous cover "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" Also, he was so obsessed with Perfume that the Nirvana song "Scentless Apprentice" was directly inspired by the novel. In the album credits of In Utero he thanked author Patrick Süsskind, as well as Quentin Tarantino.
  • Dave Grohl recently revealed that he and Kurt were big fans of Super Mario World and would sometimes play the game until three or four in the morning.
• Courtney Love is obsessed with Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of Sid Vicious and wished she could play her in the film Sid & Nancy, but this didn't happen. She has also said: "The one rock star that makes me know I'm shit is Polly Harvey. I'm nothing next to the purity she experiences."
• Tori Amos is a huge comic book fan.
  • Neil Gaiman based the character of Delirium on her, and she does shoutouts to him in several of her songs.
  • Her daughter's middle name is Lórien, from Lothlórien.
• Pretty much every member of Breaking Benjamin is a gamer.
  • Considering they recorded the song "Blow Me Away" for Halo 2 and even asked a crowd at a concert if they were excited about Halo 3 coming out, this is pretty much self-explanatory.
• Phil Collins has confessed to being a huge video game addict. He even got himself written into Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, making him a Promoted Fanboy.
  • He also happens to own the second-largest collection of Alamo memorabilia in the world. The only one ahead of him: the Alamo itself! He later donated his collection to the Alamo in 2014, and he was named as an "honorary Texan" by the Texas Legislature after doing so.
  • His Genesis bandmates also qualify. Tony Banks is a fan of The Lord of the Rings and Mike Rutherford referenced Doctor Who in Come Rain Or Shine.
• The Strokes once interrupted their own concert to do the theme song from Thundercats.
• Neil Peart of Rush was a known bookworm, and his lyrics reflected the influence of both science fiction and fantasy on most of their 1970s albums. Particularly, "The Necromancer" and "Rivendell" were influenced by Tolkien, while "Anthem" and "2112" were influenced by the works of Ayn Rand (the band would distance themselves from the latter in later years).
  • The entire group are huge fans of South Park, at any rate, and their latest album is a Steampunk Concept Album. Make of that what you will.
• Slash of Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver fame has admitted to being addicted to Rock Band and is a fan of Phineas and Ferb. On top of that, he is an avid Pinball collector (he had over 20 tables at one point), and 'designed'' two different machines based on Guns N' Roses (one in the 1990s by Data East, the other in 2020 by Jersey Jack).
• Voltaire is a huge Trekkie, and he even recorded an entire EP of (very, very NSFW) Star Trek songs called Banned on Vulcan. When he performed some of them at a concert, he admitted he wasn't sure if he was going to play them since Trek is so far removed from his usual subject matter, but then he realized "Goths are just Trekkies in black". He also had a song parodying Star Wars called "Cantina".
  • He now has a new album called Bitrektual which gathers "Cantina" with the Banned On Vulcan songs and adds several new scifi-inspired songs, including one for Doctor Who.
  • Voltaire is also a huge fan of anime if a cover of one of his albums featuring a chibi-fied version of him is of anything to go by.
• My Chemical Romance are massive video game geeks and comic book nerds. Lead singer Gerard Way is also the author of the comic series The Umbrella Academy.
  • The band is a big fan of Grant Morrison and had him appear as a supervillain in their video for Art Is The Weapon.
  • Lots of celebrities will write a comic series at some time or another. Gerard Way though is an Eisner winner, the highest award in comic books.
  • Don't forget Star Wars. Jabba Glob, anyone?
  • They're all huge horror movie nerds as well.
  • And Warcraft.
  • He also sang in and wrote the ending song for Advent Children Complete (at least in the Japanese version).
    • Not to mention he majored in Cartooning in college.
    • As well as interning at DC's Vertigo Comics imprint (during Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol, no less) and at Cartoon Network. As House to Astonish put it when his DC Young Animal imprint was announced, Gerard Way's career trajectory looks a lot like someone who became an internationally famous rock star as a stepping stone to breaking into comics.
  • Gerard Way also collects Warhammer, name dropping Rogue Trader and Necromunda in the process.
• Bloodhag are a metal band who advocate literacy and reading. All their songs are Biographies of Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors. One of them is a Librarian.
• Tom Scholz, founder of arena rock band Boston, has a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT; and was the founder of Scholz Research & Development (now owned by Dunlop Mfg Inc), the company behind the majority of the electronics used by the band; including the well-known Rockman amplifier and effects system.
  • He developed the sound system for the Polaroid Land Camera. The band used "Better Music Through Science" as a motto.
• Writer/director/musician Liam Lynch (best known for "United States of Whatever") has a video podcast, and had an entire episode dedicated to his massive Doctor Who collection.
• Daniel Johnston is a huge fan of The Beatles and Casper the Friendly Ghost and referred to them several times in his work, including on his album Yip/Jump Music.
• Michael Stipe of R.E.M. loves Krazy Kat so much that he has an Ignatz the Mouse tattoo. He also called Patti Smith the biggest influence in his life.
• The Mars Volta. Both Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala are big (old-school!) Doctor Who fans, citing it as an influence in their work. It also runs in Omar's family: Brothers Marcel and Marfred front a band called Zechs Marquise.
• Janelle Monáe, a young neo-soul singer whose current project is a four-part Rock Opera in which she plays a Robot Girl on the run in a dystopian future city for the crime of falling in love with a human. It's based on Fritz Lang's Metropolis, as well as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
• Andrew W.K..: He released an album of Gundam covers, "Gundam Rock", to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary.
  • He's also a massive Thomas Ligotti fan (Cosmic Horror FTW!), plays bass with art-folk weirdos Current 93 and debuted with a cassette of experimental synth music on a record label run by the guys from Wolf Eyes. Yeah, he is.
  • Not only did his signature song, "Party Hard", become a meme on 4chan, but he's a self-professed /b/tard himself. And reads Encyclopedia Dramatica.
  • He is also a brony.
• Chibi, lead singer of The Birthday Massacre, is an avid Sailor Moon fan, and drummer Rhim is a Pokémon: The Series fan.
• Owen Pallett, who made string arrangements for Mika, The Last Shadow Puppets, Arcade Fire, Beirut, Pet Shop Boys, and Grizzly Bear, has also made some albums as a solo artist. The name? Final Fantasy. Not to forget, he references Zelda in the song "He Poos Clouds".
• Trent Reznor is a huge Quake/Doom fan, so much that he composed the music for the first Quake game. He also played the Zelda theme in a concert and had openly admitted a massive videogame addiction. His profile pictures on Twitter and Instagram are from his favorite game Robotron: 2084.
• Founder/On and off Frontman Matt Good of From First To Last is a huge WoW nerd.
• Gene Simmons is a big fan of sci-fi and comics, which were reportedly a huge influence on his stage persona. He also used to write for sci-fi fanzines in his youth.
  • He is also a fan of Pokémon, and said that the design of Obstagoon, a Pokémon that is a walking homage to Simmons's stage persona of The Demon, was "flattering".
• Current Van Halen bassist Wolfgang Van Halen not only plays Guitar Hero himself, he also contributed to the development of the band's licensed game by picking the guest act songs.
• Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider is a huge gamer. He's made special appearances on Xbox Live at certain points, and on a VH1 special once told a story about how his son accidentally erased his save file in The Legend of Zelda.
  • He also got to appear in the intro to Singstar 80's in his Twisted Sister gear.
• Edguy drummer Felix Bohnke is a huge fan of Star Wars (this is his drum solo) and Star Trek (see his thank you's in the Mandrake album).
• Franz Ferdinand and Taking Back Sunday are Harry Potter fans.
• Linkin Park really likes Humongous Mecha and anime.
  • And to top it all off, Bandai has announced that a Linkin Park themed Gundam will be packaged with the deluxe edition of A Thousand Suns. Whether or not this will be exclusive to Japan has yet to be determined.
  • On the gaming front, Mike got bored while recording A Thousand Suns and hooked up an NES so he could play Metroid in his home studio and the entire band are pretty big fans of Halo, hosting tournaments between themselves and touring partners on a dedicated bus.
• Indie-rock artist Mac De Marco is a fan of the EarthBound (1994) soundtrack and projects footage from the game on tour.
• Joe Walsh, guitarist of the Eagles, is an avid ham radio operator, having an Amateur Extra Class license ^note  The highest level amateur radio license one can receive from the FCC , going by the call sign WB6ACU, and using a lot of vintage equipment bought from eBay. In one instance, he delayed a concert just to be able to get a winning bid on radio equipment.
• Marilyn Manson (the person) is an avid gamer. Former bassist Twiggy Ramirez was as well, and he's also a huge Star Wars fan and did a really creepy, proportioned-like-in-the-comics Joker cosplay.
• Some members of Joy Division and New Order have a nerdy side to them:
  • Ian Curtis was an avid reader, with authors like JG Ballard, Franz Kafka, and William S. Burroughs influencing his dark lyrics.
  • Guitarist Bernard Sumner was an electronics hobbyist in the band's early days, picking up the hobby to keep himself occupied at night while suffering from insomnia. He built the band's first synthesizer from instructions in a magazine.
  • Drummer Stephen Morris is a fan of Doctor Who and collects tanks. Not tank models, actual tanks.
• Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane was a science fiction fan.
• It was Scott Weiland's idea for Sarah Michelle Gellar to appear in Stone Temple Pilots' "Sour Girl" music video, as he was a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies is a huge gamer, claiming to have had almost every console system released since he was a child, and also collects pinball machines (showcased in the band's indicatively named video "Silverball"). This brought Red vs. Blue to his attention, and led to some collaborations with Rooster Teeth - regarding RVB, intermissions featuring the characters played in a Barenaked Ladies tour, and Robertson voiced a character; he also starred in their short-lived show Captain Dynamic, had RT direct the video for "Odds Are", and the band wrote a song for Lazer Team.

Heavy Metal & Hard rock musicians

• Motörhead: Lemmy was a huge fan of early 1950s and 1960s rock 'n' roll, especially The Beatles. He was also quite a history buff and had extensive knowledge in the military history of World War II and collected uniforms, weapons, medals, insignia and other stuff from that era. He also went on record saying that even though he self-identified as an anarchist and expressed being against "Nazism, Communism, and other extremes," he collected Nazi relics because he thought they "had some of the coolest stuff".
• Alice in Chains former frontman Layne Staley was a huge gamer. It's been said that he always kept his Gameboy on him and played it whenever he had the chance. One of the last known photos of him also saw him wearing a Metal Gear Solid shirt, and he himself once boasted in an interview that he maxed out his first credit card buying video games at a Toys R' Us, while his condo had a gigantic TV that he used exclusively for gaming and had an entire room devoted to storage for his collection. Additionally, he spent a good deal of his final recording session talking with the studio runner about various games on the PlayStation that was hooked up in the studio and giving him tips on how to beat certain parts that were giving him problems.
  • Likewise, Jerry Cantrell is a fan of the Call of Duty: Black Ops games and was excited when he saw the AIC song "Them Bones" referenced in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
• Nightwish songs include references to Dragonlance, Lord of the Rings, and an entire Epic Rocking nerdgasm over the Disney Animated Canon, and bassist Marco Hietala has confessed to loving video games. Band leader and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen always has a figurine of Captain Jack Sparrow, whom he resembles, tied to the front of his keyboards during concerts. Tuomas also recorded a whole concept album based on The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
• There was an article in Rolling Stone where Serj Tankian of System of a Down confessed to being a huge Dungeons & Dragons geek and in search of a good DM.
  • Also, John Dolmayan, like Nicholas Cage, purchased an authentic copy of Action Comics #1 at an auction. And not only that, he is, in general, a huge comic books fan and, if The Other Wiki is to be believed, was involved in the founding of a comics publishing company.
• Led Zeppelin. Do you doubt this? Listen to the song "The Battle of Evermore". For that matter, "Ramble On" specifically namechecks Gollum and Mordor.
  • Robert Plant (singer and lyricist) was into Tolkien as well as Celtic mythology. Guitarist Jimmy Page, on the other hand, liked the occult and Aleister Crowley.
  • Robert Plant even named his dog "Strider".
    • Before Led Zeppelin, Plant was in a band called "Hobbstweedle".
• Rob Zombie is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of vintage films (particularly horror and exploitation films), television shows, comic books, manga, and anime; His film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, also seems to take some inspiration from Scooby-Doo, Ralph Bakshi, and a certain 90's cartoon.
• According to an issue of Hit Parader, Slipknot/Stone Sour vocalist Corey Taylor is an avid comic book fanatic, especially of Spider-Man.
  • He's also mentioned on Twitter that he's a fan of Channel Awesome. As of summer 2017, between trading tweets with Diamanda Hagan, doing a promo video for Rocked, and meeting The Nostalgia Critic himself while on tour, and filming a cameo while at his studio, it seems that the admiration is mutual. He even appeared, alongside his son, in the (controversial) The Wall review in 2019.
• Lead singer of deathcore outfit Emmure Frankie Palmeri is a fan of Street Fighter, Naruto, and Marvel comics if his Instagram is anything to go by. (Some NSFW pics ahead). A lot of their songs reference this with names like "Demons with Ryu" and "Umar Dumps Dormammu."
  • Not only that but his apartment is littered with anime posters and other merchandise, including a fucking Yoko Littner waifu pillow.
• George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, the lead singer for death-metal band Cannibal Corpse, has said, "World of Warcraft is fuckin' life for me."
  • Notable enough to get an in-game character named after him.
  • And according to the "Centuries of Torment" DVD, he's a big Star Wars geek as well. Which makes him and Mark Hamill voicing for Metalocalypse Hilarious in Hindsight.
• Everyone currently in Aborted save for maybe JB qualifies, though Sven, in particular, is known for his love of video games and his near-encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies.
• Trevor Strnad of The Black Dahlia Murder is a self-admitted One of Us.
  • One of the band's most popular songs is called "What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse", a Shout-Out to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.
• Anthrax are Judge Dredd fans and have appeared on-stage dressed as Judges and done a song entitled, appropriately enough, I Am The Law based on the comics.
• Korn's vocalist Jonathan Davis is or was a confessed World of Warcraft addict. He also made plans for a music celebrity-themed fighting game called Pop Scars, which never got past preliminary development. Also, he's a big Harry Potter fan.
• Many Power Metal bands are made up of massive geeks. For Blind Guardian, this is especially true.
  • Blind Guardian frontman Hansi Kursch is very open about his fandom for fantasy literature and video games. He even has an entire song about The Witcher (both the novels and the video games) on the upcoming "The God Machine."
• Dream Theater's John Petrucci is an avid gamer, and won't tour without his favorite console, the Sega Saturn. He actually composed some music for a Saturn game, as well.
• Psychostick songs include a lot of (usually negative) references to Facebook, Windows Vista, Award Bait Songs, riffing on stupid movie plots, email spam, and Bruce Campbell. In one video, one of them is wearing a Halo: Reach T-Shirt. Their video for "Rent in Peace" features James Rolfe, with whom they appeared in two episodes of his Rental Reviews series - appropriate, given that the song is a love letter to the video stores of old.
• Trey Azagthoth, guitarist for American death metal band Morbid Angel, is also a fan of video games and anime. And if you think he's into gory stuff just because he's in a death metal band, you couldn't be more mistaken. One of his favorite animes is... Sailor Moon! You haven't read wrong.
• Adam "Nergal" Darski from the Death Metal band Behemoth is a major history nerd. He studied history and mythology in college for 6 years and is licensed to be a museum curator.
• English Heavy Metal band Pyre, and how. When they aren't singing about Doctor Who or Supreme Commander, they're likely to be found making blogging references to the works of Joss Whedon or tutorial videos for playing the Cylon theme.
  • Subverted with their track My God Carries A Hammer, which songwriter Peter Chapman insists is about the Norse deity, not the Marvel character of the same name, and denies having read a comic in his life.
• Irish thrashers Gama Bomb are pretty big nerds, as evidenced by their writing songs about Final Fight and Robocop, among others.
• Arthur von Nagel of Cormorant is known to have a GameFAQs account. He also left the group on good terms to pursue a video game career with Telltale Games.
• Equilibrium are huge fans of Video Games and have released a song about Monkey Island ("Die Affeninsel") and a cover of the main theme of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim named "Himmelsrand", the German name of Skyrim (the in-universe land, not the game).
• Chris Barnes is a huge fan of movies, often citing horror films as inspirations for some of his lyrics. He even has a column on his official Twitter called "Barnes Picks" where he goes out of his way to rate certain films he watches and share his opinions with fans. He also has a collection of over 600 DVDs.
• Mike Patton is said to be an avid gamer, which makes a lot of sense as he's done voice-work for games like The Darkness, Left 4 Dead, Portal and also as Nathan "Rad" Spencer in Bionic Commando (2009). A short print interview in the early 90s focused entirely on his love for video games, and had him citing Road Rash, Smash TV and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as his current favorites, as well as expressing a desire to one day compose music for a game.
  • He also is a big fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Needless to say, he was more than happy when he got to sing a remake of the '87 version's theme song for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, actually getting to do music that his nieces can enjoy.
• Klayton of Celldweller is an avid gamer, a massive Science Fiction Geek, and quite interested in astronomy... oh, and he likes Godzilla.
• The Protomen's whole concept as a band is their avid love for Mega Man. They've made two albums (a 3rd one on the way) that focuses on the backstory of Dr. Light and Wily and have incorporated the Megaman and Protoman helmets into their costumes.
• The entire album Matriarch by Veil of Maya has the songs named after female characters in various different media, including Mikasa, Lucy/Nyu and Daenerys
• Sabaton:
  • The songs not about European military history? Shadows, about the Nazgul, and Birds of War, about the Chaos Marines. They're also huge World of Tanks fans and have announced the start of a collaboration with its publisher Wargaming.
  • Frontman Joakim Brodén has turned up in several Sabaton History videos wearing a Starfleet Academy t-shirt.
• Jon Chang, vocalist of the grindcore bands Discordance Axis and Gridlink, is a huge fan of science fiction, anime, and video games. He particularly likes Neon Genesis Evangelion, basing almost half the songs on the Discordance Axis album The Inalienable Dreamless on the show (albeit very obliquely), and in general his lyrics are littered with references to obscure sci-fi novels and anime. He's even a published comic book author now, responsible for the graphic novel Black Powder, Red Earth, about mercenaries in the Middle East.
• Neige of Alcest has publicly expressed his admiration for anime films like AKIRA and especially the works of Hayao Miyazaki, to the point where the band's album Kodama is literally a concept album based Princess Mononoke, complete with animesque album artwork.
• Avenged Sevenfold are evidently fans of Call of Duty. Their performance in the secret ending of Black Ops II? Not a promotional stunt.
• DragonForce has videogame effects as a trademark in their music, and have admitted a passion towards videogames. They even named themselves after a video game.
• Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden is a huge Monty Python fan, to the extent of singing the main title song on their documentary, Life of Python. He and the band's Lead Bassist Steve Harris are also fans of various media, as indicated by all the songs written about books, movies and historical moments.
• Original Death vocalist Kam Lee is a massive horror buff and tokusatsu fan. His official Facebook fan page is littered with images of his rather impressive collection of horror films and memorabilia, and he is certainly not afraid to share his opinions on the latest films he watches with his fans. He is also huge into '70s and '80s Punk Rock, which he cites as a major influence on his post-Death musical projects.
• Ozzy Osbourne is a big Beatles fan, having cited them as the reason why he took up a musical career. Apparently, he even rescheduled an appearance on Howard Stern's show so that he could meet Paul McCartney on the day that Paul was going to be on. He is also shown to be interested in history, particularly the Second World War as he was born a few years after the war's conclusion and has seen the destruction the war left on his hometown.
  • Fellow Black Sabbath member Geezer Butler studied as an accountant which proved to be of practical use which resulted in him managing the band's finances in the early days. Geezer is also an avowed football fan, and is a lifelong supporter of the Aston Villa Football Club.
  • Bill Ward, the original drummer for Black Sabbath, is also very much into poetry, having posted his works on his social media pages.
• Anton Kabanen, the founder of Battle Beast and Beast in Black, is a mega-fan of Berserk: easily a third of his songwriting output is about it, including multiple songs about the Eclipse and a reference in "Hell for All Eternity" to the Missing Episode of the manga.
• Tom Araya of Slayer has admitted to singing Country Music songs to help keep his "singing chops up."
• Dave Mustaine is a big fan of The Punisher, and has written several songs ("Holy Wars... The Punishment Due" and "Psychotron") about the character. He also once admitted to buying a PlayStation just so he could play the Punisher video game.

Punk rock artists

• Johnny Rotten/John Lydon is a fan of Can, Magma, Van der Graaf Generator, Captain Beefheart and likes Reggae. Despite his infamous "I hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt, he's actually a fan of the band, given his love of Progressive Rock and Kraut Rock mentioned previously, and just wanted to provoke people. He bestowed the stage name of Pistols bandmate Sid Vicious partially out of homage to former Floyd frontman Syd Barrett. He also is a fan of Oscar Wilde: "His stuff was fucking brilliant. What an attitude to life!… He turned out to be the biggest poof on earth at a time when that was completely unacceptable. What a genius."
• Sid Vicious said in a 1977 interview: "I like our music to listen to as much as I like The Ramones to listen to. The Ramones are my favorite group, by the way." He also mentioned that he liked going to the "Reggae discos with massive sound systems and they were really good." He also acknowledged that he read comics mostly and only read horror books. In another 1978 interview Vicious specified he had a "large pile of Marvel comics" and mentioned that he "always liked Lou Reed. The Velvets came out when I was 10 and I loved that stuff." The singer professed liking the songs "Waiting For My Man", "Sister Ray" and "Kicks" in particular. Further in that same interview, he admits liking David Bowie and Brian Eno too. When the journalist told him that having a duo interview between Vicious and Reed might be a good idea Vicious answered: "I'd love to talk to Lou Reed. There's a lot of things I'd like to ask him."
  • He also seemed to like MAD Magazine: [1]
• The Ramones were notably proud that apart from the usual punks, their fanbase was made up of Freaks and Geeks, as their music wasn't as popular as the "big" rock acts of the time. A lot of their songs dealt with teenage alienation and they were notably freaks and geeks themselves (Though maybe not Johnny, though he was an anti-social outcast too). One of their most notable songs is Pinhead, a general tribute to their fans that also pays respect to the film Freaks: Gabba, Gabba, We accept you, we accept you, ONE OF US!
  • Not to mention that they covered the old Spiderman cartoon's theme song on at least one live album. You know, the "Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can!" theme song. Which is pretty nerdy.
  • In the video for "I Wanna Be Sedated", one member (was it Dee Dee?) spends the entire video reading X-Men comics.
  • There's also this picture◊ of Joey posing next to a Kamen Rider statue.
  • Joey Ramone's favorite movie was Bride of Frankenstein.
• Dexter Holland, lead singer of the punk band The Offspring, handsome, blond, valedictorian from high school, master's degree in molecular biology, applied for a Ph.D. in the same field but turned it down in order to focus on his band. Years later, in 2017, he finally clinched the Ph.D. and released a dissertation that can pave the way to cure HIV.
  • He's not the only punk rock science nerd. The most notable being Greg Graffin, lead singer of legendary punk act Bad Religion and a respected science professor at UCLA (he splits his time between the two).
  • Another person in this category would be Milo Aukerman of The Descendents: The album Milo Goes To College was so named because he had decided that once the album was finished, he'd take a few years off from the band to study Biology at the University of California. He now has a doctorate in biochemistry and splits his time between the band and his academic research.
• Apparently Green Day has discovered the internet.
• Patti Smith is a huge fan of MAD Magazine and claimed "after "Mad" drugs were nothing." She also adores Arthur Rimbaud, William Blake, and William S. Burroughs so much that she referenced them a lot in her song lyrics. She also loves Robert Mapplethorpe, a photographer who took some of the most famous pictures of her, including one on the cover of Horses, and they were close friends together. Smith also wrote lyrics for several songs by Blue Öyster Cult and performed some of them personally. She's a fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, participated in a DVD Commentary track for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters, and jumped at the chance to record a song for the end credits of the series' final episode.
• Doll Skin has a song called "Daughter", which is based on Aliens, one of drummer Meghan Herring's favorite movies.

Pop, Soul, R&B and Electronic musicians

• Say what you will about (the now late) Michael Jackson, but his arcade collection is an impossibly wonderful sight to behold.
  • Not to mention he had almost every video game console known to man. He even had a PS2 months before it came out, along with a PS3 later on.
  • He was also a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog in the 1990s and was even a composer for Sonic 3 & Knuckles. While it's currently unknown if his music actually made it into the finished product, it's worth noting that many fans noticed similarities between his songs and the music of Sonic 3 before his involvement was officially confirmed.
  • This was only part of Jackson's life-long association with Sega, which started with Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (which only came to be because Nintendo didn't take the proposal for an NES adaptation) all the way to Space Channel 5 Part 2.
  • Still on the subject of videogames, for years it was believed that he only lent his likeness to Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2, but as it turns out, he voiced himself too. He liked the original enough to ask Midway to put him in the sequel, and they did, along with Shaquille O'Neal (who is mentioned over in Athletic Eggheads).
  • Jackson admired James Brown above any other musician on the planet and claimed he "learned everything from him". As a child, he let his mother call him, even if he was sleeping, whenever Brown was on TV so he could watch him perform. But he also loved Jackie Wilson, Little Richard, Diana Ross, David Ruffin, The Isley Brothers, The Bee Gees and Sammy Davis Jr..
  • The King of Pop was also a huge Walt Disney fan. He visited Disneyland countless times and even had the theme park characters visit his house. On his Neverland Ranch Disney songs could be heard everywhere.
    • Jackson had a particularly strong obsession with Peter Pan, both the original novel and the Disney adaptation. He named his entire ranch "Neverland", in reference to the book, and, like Peter Pan, wished to remain a child forever. When the film Hook was in production, Jackson desperately tried to get the part of Peter Pan, but Spielberg never considered him, which really angered Jackson.
  • Jackson was also fond of Bart Simpson. This also explains why the otherwise reclusive pop star agreed to be a special guest voice in the The Simpsons episode "Stark Raving Dad" and why he anonymously wrote the song "Do the Bartman".
  • The King of Pop was also endeared by classical music, especially Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Aaron Copland, and Ludwig van Beethoven. He also admired the paintings and sculptings of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
  • Naturally he also greatly admired Hollywood musicals and the dancing talents of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. The choreography in West Side Story (1961) inspired the music videos of "Beat It" and "Bad". He was also fascinated by Diana Ross, Greta Garbo and Elizabeth Taylor.
  • Jackson also felt Benny Hill was incredibly funny and told this to a British journalist in the 1970s. When Jackson traveled England in the late 1980s and heard of Hill's declining health he visited him personally.
  • Jackson was also moved by E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. He did the narration for the audiobook and Cult Soundtrack of the film and had himself photographed next to E.T.'s animatronic robot.
  • Queen's 1982 album Hot Space is widely regarded as their weakest album because of its heavy disco influence, but Michael cited it as a major influence for his Thriller album.
• Madonna calls Patti Smith, Blondie, Led Zeppelin, The Supremes, Carpenters, and David Bowie her prime influences. She also adores Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe and Katharine Hepburn, Mylène Farmer as well as the art of Frida Kahlo, Tamara De Lempicka and Andy Warhol. Sylvia Plath is her favorite author. In terms of dancers she admires Martha Graham and Rudolf Nureyev.
  • She also said: "I love PJ Harvey. I think her lyrics are brilliant. She's real tortured and I'm drawn to tortured people."
• Elton John is apparently a big fan of animated Disney films and he was very excited when he was asked to help with the music for The Lion King (1994).
• Stevie Nicks is a huge fan of Game of Thrones.
• Porter Robinson: where do we even begin? He's aware of and slightly good at DanceDanceRevolution, has cited RPG games as an influence (particularly on his "Worlds" album), made the first prominent commercially-released song to use an English-language Vocaloid, has spliced a bit of Song of Storms into one of his songs live, and has used clips from Neon Genesis Evangelion and Urusei Yatsura as part of his visuals during live shows. And if that wasn't enough, he actually commissioned anime studio A-1 Pictures to do the video for his song "Shelter".
• Moby is a big The Simpsons fan, even recording his own version of the Mr. Plow song. An MTV Cribs episode showed that he even has in his house a framed picture of Homer drawn by Matt Groening for him.
• Christina Aguilera is a gamer and even has a mini-arcade in her house. She even loaned her image to a Nintendo ad for Tomodachi Life and adores playing the Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog games. Plus, her son inherited her love of games by being a massive Minecraft fan.
• P!nk is a huge fan of Janis Joplin and would love to portray her in a movie adaptation.
• Gnarls Barkley performed for an MTV show in Star Wars Costumes.
• Canadian pop singer Lights is a huge World of Warcraft player (she plays a Death Knight, which is rather funny given her image); she's written an entire song that's discreetly about the game. The only line that will definitely tip you off if you know what it means is "I'm not the hunter, I'm not the marked".
  • She has a tattoo of a sword from World of Warcraft on her right arm.
• Basshunter's song "Vi Sitter i Ventrilo och Spelar DotA" ("We Sit in Ventrilo and Play DotA") (from the album LOL <(^^,)>) is about Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The same album features "Boten Anna", a song about an IRC bot.
• Canadian electronic music artist deadmau5 might just be the nerdiest musician ever. He has a host of gaming related tattoos, including hearts from The Legend of Zelda, a Space Invader, a Creeper, and even Shigeru Miyamoto's signature. He even owns a replica of the Master Sword and Hylian Shield, which proudly hangs on his wall. He also is a major internet nerd and a huge Troll and often quotes memes in his live stream. He even incorporates video game elements and graphics in his live shows. He also taught himself computer programming, web design, and programming, 3D modeling (which is the source for the mau5head he performs in), and flash animation, among other talents.
• Dutch hardstyle artist Headhunterz is very fond of using memes and is very happy to tell you that he "took an arrow to the knee".
  • He also made a Skyrim themed track, Dragonborn, which he released as a freebie.
• It almost goes without saying that "Weird Al" Yankovic is One of Us. The video for "White And Nerdy" alone has enough content to out-geek at least any two other examples on this list. That said, he's dropped enough hints in various appearances through the years that everyone knew decades before that video. Case in point: "The Saga Begins", his retelling of The Phantom Menace to the tune of "American Pie". He released that song before the film premiered, and only had access to some parts of the script. Still, it turned out very accurate to the film.
  • Yankovic is also very fond of Hanna & Barbera cartoons it seems. He references them a lot in his music videos. He has also referenced comic strips and the comedy musicians that came before him: Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer, Frank Zappa...
• New Age singer Enya has a track titled "Lothlórien" from a good ten years before the The Lord of the Rings movies. (She also appeared on the first film's soundtrack thereof.)
• The similarities to Mello in Madonna's "Jump" video? They're intentional.
• Will "will.i.am" Adams of the Black Eyed Peas had a C-list X-Men character written into X-Men Origins: Wolverine for him to play because if he couldn't play Nightcrawler, he wanted to be someone with the same powers. And really, even without the references to SF (including Transformers) in their lyrics, any group which has giant dancing mecha in their videos deserves to be on this list.
• The members of power pop band Hellogoodbye are pretty big gamers, going as far as taking a mobile gaming rig with them on every tour. Keyboard and guitar player Joseph Marro wrote an editorial about it on Kotaku.
• Brian Eno once said he owned more albums by Fela Kuti than by any other artist and that he listened to him 'over and over again'.
• For a boy band, *NSYNC were pretty geeky.
  • They're diehard Star Wars fans, and George Lucas even invited them to film a cameo for Attack of the Clones as a gift to his daughters, which eventually got cut for legal reasons. Joey Fatone was practically beside himself when he got to see the world's largest collection of Star Wars merchandise.
  • Some of their early American concerts would open to them marching out to the Imperial March while in white fatigues and helmets similar to stormtroopers.
  • Coincidentally, Lance Bass's birthday also happens to be May 4th, the unofficial Star Wars day. He also considers himself a Ravenclaw.
  • Joey is also a mega Superman nerd and owns a storage locker that contains all of the band's old merchandise and his Superman memorabilia. His former house in Orlando even had a room dedicated solely to Superman.
  • Much to fanboy rage, Lance was infamously the original voice of Sephiroth in the first installment of Kingdom Hearts before being replaced by George Newbern. He admits that no matter how hard he tried, he can't defeat the character.
  • They've even included a reference to Mystery Science Theater 3000 in their 2000 concert special.◊
  • Justin Timberlake allegedly had a custom gaming station built for him just so he could play Halo.
  • They sampled the Pac-Man theme in their song "The Game is Over" and the live performance of the song on their PopOdyssey tour was them in a simulated video game battle against an evil wizard.
  • Joey and Chris have been convention guests and are not above discussing their geek passions.
  • Lance Bass's infamous attempt at space training is because he really is that nerdy about the subject.
• Jennifer Lopez said in a 2009 interview that she watched West Side Story (1961) "37 times growing up", but: "I never wanted to be that wimpy Maria... I wanted to be Anita, who danced her way to the top."
• Taylor Swift named her cats Olivia Benson and Meredith Grey, which qualifies as kind of geeky even if the shows in question are mainstream. She's also, by her own admission, addicted to Tumblr.
• Jade Thirlwall of Little Mix is a massive RuPaul's Drag Race fan, occasionally quoting lines from the show in interviews and citing Bianca Del Rio as her favorite queen.
• Dubstep producers tend to have pretty nerdy tastes in media if their choice of vocal samples are of any indication. Midnight Tyrannosaurus, for example, has used samples from, among others, Bloodborne, Pinky and the Brain, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Rick and Morty... multiple times.
• Lady Gaga is a gamer, and seems to particularly enjoy Bayonetta. There were even talks of her playing the titular character in a live action movie, but for now, she has a music video for "Rain on Me" which contains many references to Bayonetta.
• Both members of Knife Party frequently play video games. Rob Swire, in particular, is a huge fan of Mega Man, while Gareth McGrillen likes Star Wars
• Ariana Grande is a big fan of Pokémon- she has admitted to playing Pokemon Let's Go, Eevee! "for fifteen hours, honestly" on her day off, and she even has an Eevee tattoo.
• In Rihanna's article in the August 2012 issue of Harper's Bazaar, she talked about how, growing up, she watched horror movies and Professional Wrestling, saying The Undertaker was her favorite, which makes sense since Taker is a horror-themed wrestler. She's also been a Trekkie since she was little.
• Chilli of TLC is a huge fan of the WWE. She's been seen at live WWE shows on some occasions, including WrestleMania 28, and appeared in a episode of WWE Countdown where she talked about The Rock.
• David Archuleta is a huge fan of musicals—notably, watching Les Misérables is what first got him interested in singing—and also video games like The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon and anime like My Hero Academia.
• Netta, winner of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, is a huge Occidental Otaku and Pokémon fan, and her winning song "Toy" contains the line "I'm taking my Pikachu home".
• Skrillex named his record label, OWSLA, after a term used in Watership Down.
• The Backstreet Boys opened their Into the Millennium Tour concerts with their backing dancers marching onstage to the Imperial March from Star Wars.
• Vanessa Carlton has stated that the title and concept of her 2011 album Rabbits on the Run were inspired by Watership Down and the works of Stephen Hawking.
• 90s Aussie pop duo Savage Garden were named after a phrase from The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, "Beauty was a Savage Garden".
• Katy Perry has loved the Pokémon series as far back as Pokémon Red and Blue. For the series 25th anniversary, Katy worked with Gamefreak to create a song for the event.
• Little Boots is not only enough of a synth geek to make all her backings herself, she is also a Jean-Michel Jarre fan to the point of having her own laser harp. She was eventually promoted into a collaboration by and with the man himself as part of his Electronica project.
• Sia is a huge Survivor fan, to the point where she has actually given money to her favorite players.
• BTS:
  • The members are huge anime fans. They even have a whole song named "Anpanman", based on the character of the same name. Series they are fans of include Naruto (with all members singing and Naruto-running to the opening in a karaoke episode of Run BTS!) and One Piece. Jimin in particular started learning Kendo as a kid to be a swordsman like Zoro (with other members gifting him volumes of the series as presents), and RM references Whitebeard in "Cypher pt. 2".
  • Among the many anime series he has watched, V has mentioned being a fan of My Hero Academia, and has cosplayed as Syaoran Li from Cardcaptor Sakura. Jungkook has similarly watched a bunch, favoring sports anime like Haikyuu!! and Slam Dunk (with SUGA also being a huge fan of the latter). Jin, meanwhile, has mentioned loving Parasyte. Both Jungkook, Jin and V have mentioned liking works by Studio Ghibli and Mamoru Hosoda.
  • The 2013 song "Attack on Bangtan" not only has an obvious reference to Attack on Titan, but the beginning line "But what will happen if Bangtan Sonyeondan advances? Bang! Tan! So! Nyeon! Dan!" is (according to this translator) based on a memetic scene from a 2005 Korean StarCraft comic. RM and j-hope in particular have mentioned liking Starcraft.
  • RM is a huge Pokémon fan and has referenced the franchise in "Intro: What Am I to You". His favorite is Dragonite - the interview linked above famously had RM frantically trying to explain his favorite Pokemon (of which he only knew its Korean name, Mangnanyeong).
  • The members have mentioned liking or following esports. They all play League of Legends (Jin plays as Jhin), have uploaded videos during group LoL sessions, and played against South Korean esports team T1 for a Run BTS episode.
    • Jungkook himself is an avid Overwatch gamer - see this 2019 clip he recorded of himself playing as Widowmaker (which got him the attention of some pro players); Jungkook and V have named South Korean Youtube players YulmuAppa and 각 as their favorite Overwatch players, respectively.
    • Additionally, V has played spontaneous matches of Sudden Attack and Player Unknowns Battlegrounds with fans and has recommended other games such as It Takes Two; Jin, also a videogame fan, has played Mario games since childhood and is a dedicated MapleStory player.
  • They've also made albums and songs based on literature, psychology and philosophy; WINGS, for example, is structured after Hermann Hesse's Demian (with the music video of the title track and promotional short films containing excerpts of the book and references to Greek mythology, particularly the myth of Icarus), and the MAP OF THE SOUL series is based on Jungian theory. RM especially reads regularly and shares passages of books in social media, as well as pictures from his trips to art museums.
• Alicia Keys' son Egypt, while on tour with her, played Giorno's Theme from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind on the piano.
• John Legend is a longtime fan of Neopets, becoming the brand ambassador for the site's revamp in 2023.

Rappers and hip hop artists

See also: Nerdcore

• Soulja Boy likes Death Note and Dragon Ball Z. He made a song sampling Near's theme and made songs titled "Anime" and "Goku". He also likes Naruto, Afro Samurai, Case Closed, and Cowboy Bebop according to his Twitter. He also likes video games. He has a second career as a Twitcher streamer where he plays games like Call of Duty, Runescape, and Rogue Company, and he's pretty good at it too.
• T-Pain is a known fan of Steven Universe.
  • He has also rapped for Epic Rap Battles of History as Stevie Wonder.
  • He has also done Let's Plays of games like Call of Duty and Overwatch in his spare time.
  • And cosplayed Leroy Smith from Tekken 7.
• Snoop Dogg has been a fan of the Tekken series since the 1990s. Not only that, but he cameos in a Dogg-themed stage in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, complete with a song performed just for the game.
  • One particular image◊ suggests that he is also a Homestuck.
  • He has also rapped for Epic Rap Battles of History as Moses.
  • He is also a huge Coronation Street fan.
  • He is also a big fan of Naruto, which he was, in fact, an active follower of while the manga was still ongoing. Only days after the final chapter had been published, he shared this particular little treat on his Facebook and Instagram [2].
  • He's also fairly knowledgeable about comic books if his song "Batman & Robin" is any indication.
• Captain Dan & the Scurvy Crew are pirate rappers, nerdy as that is, one of their songs was called Dead Mines, it's about beating the shit out of the Defias Brotherhood.
• For a bunch of gangsta rappers, the rap group Slaughterhouse likes to reference Voltron and comic books a whole lot in their lyrics. Joe Budden even compares himself to E. Honda at one point in a song.
• It shouldn't surprise you that rapper Akira the Don is a fan of anime and comics - his album The Life Equation is a reference to Jack Kirby's New Gods story. What should surprise you is that album's opening track features spoken word narration from his good friend Grant Morrison.
• And of course, the entire genre of Nerdcore Rap. One of the best examples may be MC Frontalot's "It Is Pitch Dark", containing references to a substantial number of Infocom's games.
  • MC Frontalot one-upped this by teaming up with Jick to create a new quest in order to promote his latest album; the first ten players to complete the quest received a free copy of the CD.
• On the note of Underground Rappers, Random largely made a name for himself in the underground by making the Mega Ran and Mega Ran 9 albums, which are based on (and sample the music tracks of) the Mega Man games.
  • On one of his newest albums, check out Epoch, as he namechecks just about every major game from the last twenty years over a slightly slowed down version of the Epoch music from Chrono Trigger. And For the Gamers, it's completely evident that he's one of us.
• Kanye West has worked geekiness into his music every now and then. The music video for "Stronger" contains shot-for-shot remakes of scenes from AKIRA.
  • The "Stronger" video also references the Leiji Matsumoto-produced anime-styled music video for Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," also known as a segment of the movie Interstella 5555.
  • Plus, Kanye mentioned that he used to make eroges.
  • "Good morning, look at the valedictorian/Scared of the future while I hop in the Delorean." — From Kanye's track "Good Morning."
    • Speaking of "Good Morning", the music video was actually produced by anime studio OLM, the same one responsible for Pokemon and Berserk.
  • He's also a professed fan of Rick and Morty.
• Jay-Z did an album called Kingdom Come, and its title track references a whole host of superheroes. The idea came from one of the people in his studio, who was a comic book fan and was reading the comic book 'Kingdom Come', where Superman returns to teach the young superheroes how to follow in his footsteps (and comparing it to the state of hip-hop when Jay came back).
• Lupe Fiasco is a dyed in the wool nerd and will casually drop references to things such as Lupin III, which he mentioned on Kanye's "Touch The Sky". He's also a big Harry Potter fan.
  • While we're on the subject of Fiasco, he has dropped lines that reference Excalibur, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Gundam, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros., Robin Hood, Spider-Man (in the same verse)... his to-be-released song Army Girl samples a remixed Street Fighter track. There's even a picture of him dressed as Darth Vader (minus the helmet, plus a gold watch). Just look up "Darth Fiasco".
  • He's got Vader in the top left corner of a mixtape cover as well.
    • Speaking of covers, has anyone seen just what's on "Food and Liquor"? Among the floating stuff, he's got a Nintendo DS and a Halo copy. And in the video for "I Gotcha", he's playing a classic joystick console.
    • A final thing to slap the Official Seal of Nerdiness: Everything you see on Food and Liquor? The DS, the games, the action figures...he said those were things he carried around every day.
  • Lupe also references Dragon Ball Z in his "Free Chilly" freestyle (not to be confused with the song on his "The Cool" album) with the following line: "I push ki like Dragon Ball Z, see what I'm sayin'."
  • His verse on "Don't Look Down" by fellow Musical Freak Kanye West is all about the departure of Phoenix from the X-Men.
  • Lupe can be seen wearing a Wicked City t-shirt in his "Kick Push" music video.
• The RZA, of the Wu-Tang Clan, is a gigantic comic book geek. Not only is there an entire chapter in The Wu-Tang Manual devoted to the influence of comics in the Wu-Tang mythos (actual quote: "When I started to form the Wu-Tang Clan — around the end of my comics collection — I stopped thinking of myself as Silver Surfer and I started to think I was Galactus"), he actually created his own superhero alter-ego, Bobby Digital, as whom he not only recorded multiple albums but actually strongly considered fighting crime as. "I had the car and I had the suit. I was getting ready to go out at nighttime and right some wrongs. That was my plan — like on some Green -Hornet shit." Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is full of nerdy references, starting from the title, which is a reference to classical Kung Fu movie The 36 Chambers of Shaolin. In one song, the gang refers to the group as "Voltron, and RZA is the head".
  • The RZA is such an aficionado that he appears on the commentary track for The 36th Chamber of Shaolin with a man who is credited as a "martial arts film expert", and yet the entire commentary is RZA making salient points and referencing obscure works that this "expert" has never heard of. RZA's passion and knowledge on the track is palpable, and really quite endearing.
  • The RZA is not the only comic geek in the Wu-Tang Clan. Method Man and Ghostface Killah often refer to themselves as Johnny Blaze and Tony Starks, respectively.
    • Method Man has a whole library full of thousands of comic books.
  • The cover art for GZA's second album, Liquid Swords, was done by Denys Cowan (Batman, The Flash, Green Arrow, etc).
  • Ghostface Killah is a massive chess fan. Dude's pretty damn good.
  • Ghostface Killah, Raekwon and Method Man hired Chris Bachalo (X-men, Sandman, Death, Captain America, etc) to do no less than THREE different covers for their album "Wu-massacre".
• Pharrell Williams really does love sci-fi, cartoons, and Carl Sagan. He is also a Trekkie, throwin' up the Vulcan Salute in various music videos and co-founding a record label named Star Trak Entertainment, as well as a group called N.E.R.D.
  • Here is the official anime-style music video to his song "It Girl".
  • His tour rider actually includes a requirement that his dressing room must have a framed photo of Carl Sagan in it. According to him, this was originally added by his staff as an affectionate ribbing about his obsession, but he took to the idea right away because he finds the photos inspiring.
• In 2009, Eminem was interviewed on Jonathan Ross's chat show. Part of the interview was spent discussing the rapper's interest in (and cameo appearances in) comics. After the interview, Ross invited Eminem back to his house to look through his comic collection◊. Which, judging by what we saw in The BBC's documentary on Steve Ditko below, is rather extensive. He's also claimed that he dreamed of writing comics before becoming a rapper. He would eventually appear in a crossover with The Punisher.
  • When asked about what video games he plays, his reply was "Donkey Kong bitch." He even posted a photo of his high score in the game which would have been within the top 30 in the world at the time.
  • Eminem is also clearly a fan of South Park. The song "The Kids" from The Marshall Mathers LP is a homage, while his song "Love Game" directly references Wee-Bay from The Wire, his favorite TV show.
  • The rapper also seems fond of 1980s pop culture, as he is still referencing a lot of it even in the 2000s and 2010s, like his music video for "Rap God" where he models his look after Max Headroom.
• Rapper Waka Flocka Flame claims that he will "Run up on his car have him eating shells like Mario Go Kart” in his song Karma
  • He also references Goku in his verse on Machine Gun Kelly's "Wild Boy."
• Hip-hop violinist Lindsey Stirling is a huge sci-fi and fantasy fan. She recorded a medley of songs from The Legend of Zelda as well as the main theme from The Lord of the Rings, the theme from Skyrim, as well as videos for Phantom of the Opera, Assassin's Creed, Halo(with pianist William Joseph), Mission Impossible(with The Piano Guys), Game of Thrones and Star Wars(the last two with Peter Hollens). And all the times in those videos that she appears in costume? Yeah, she made those. She's a cosplayer.
• In addition to his single "Yeah 3X" (which sounds like it came from an 8-bit game, and has a drawing of an anime character on the cover), Chris Brown has been spotted wearing this◊.
• Underground rapper Charles Hamilton is an absolutely massive Sonic the Hedgehog fanboy, to the point where he regularly wears Sonic paraphernalia, he's created an alter ego for himself called Sonic the Hamilton, and he's devised an entire philosophy around the character.
• According to this interview with Complex Magazine, critically acclaimed hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar is a fan of classic cartoons, Power Rangers, and Batman: The Animated Series. He is also apparently a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender as evidenced by his music video for Backstreet Freestyle.
• If Twitter is to be believed, Ice-T is something of a hardcore gamer.
  • That is correct, he did an interview with an X-Box magazine about it.
• Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill (The Fugees) are both huge admirers of Bob Marley.
• Tupac Shakur was a huge Shakespeare fan during his lifetime.
• Del tha Funkee Homosapien is another fantastic example from the rap world. Gaming is a common subject in his raps, but in the song "Proto Culture", he talks about getting calluses from playing Asteroids, using the Power Glove, not being able to beat the original Ninja Gaiden because his mom wouldn't answer the phone, owning the first issue of Nintendo Power with maps of The Legend of Zelda, bragging about his collection of rare Sega games, playing Bushido Blade 2 and Tenchu, the output of Capcom and SNK, importing Xenogears from Japan, killing cops in Grand Theft Auto and getting a Sega Dreamcast before anyone else did. Unsurprisingly, this track and so many others use a lot of video game samples.
  • He stated specifically in interviews that the inspiration for his concept album Deltron 3030 was the premise of Mega Man X: Himself, updated to a futuristic reality.
    • Said album includes shouts out to Ghost in the Shell, Neo-Tokyo, and several programming languages.
• Alternative hip-hop band Death Grips are very knowledgeable, and at times downright obsessed, with the seedier, weirder side of the internet, and maintain lots of contact with their fans via Image Boards. MC Ride namedrops 4chan's /mu/ board in the song "Fuck That", and their second album NO LOVE DEEP WEB was given a Alternate Reality Game based around both /mu/ and the Tor-based so-called "deep web", run entirely by the band members themselves. They even responded to a fan's question asking if they would accept Bitcoins as a payment method for their album. They said yes.
• Underground rapper MF DOOM was quite possibly one of the most obvious cases. His main persona was basically a hip-hop version of Doctor Doom, almost never appearing without a metallic Doom mask. Nerdy references got dropped in his lyrics throughout, including (but certainly not limited to) Super Mario Bros., Star Trek, Donkey Kong, loads and loads of comic book series, Transformers, Godzilla, and so on. Hell, he even used some samples from video games and animated series.
  • Let's not forget DANGER DOOM's album The Mouse and the Mask, which is basically a rap album version of A.T.H.F., including appearances by the cast of the show and special guests like Harvey Birdman and Space Ghost. We even get to hear Meatwad rap a verse from Doom's song "Beef Rap."
• Christian rapper KJ-52 could almost be considered a Nerdcore emcee due to his Proud to Be a Geek status and references to old school video games, Homestar Runner and other decidedly nerdy things.
• Beastie Boys are all big fans of Lee Scratch Perry and have him sing a track on "Dr. Lee Ph.D." on Hello Nasty.
  • It has been told that they played a lot of video games in preparation of Ill Communication.
• Logic has rapped over "Corridors of Time" from Chrono Trigger and titled a mixtape track after Super Mario World.
• Insane Clown Posse are HUGE wrestling fans, having run their own promotion, Juggalo Championship Wrestling, since 1999, wrestled for years in the independents under a variety of names, and also wrestled for WWE, WCW and TNA. They've also referenced wrestling several times in their songs.
• Megan Thee Stallion is a huge anime fan, once wearing an outfit◊ heavily inspired by Shoto Todoroki for a photoshoot. She also referenced Sasuke in her song "Girls in the Hood". Her other anime favorites include Attack on Titan, Black Clover, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
• Sisqo of Dru Hill is a big gamer: He named his son Ryu and constantly tweets about games he's playing (a May 2020 tweet thanked Platinum Games for sending him a copy of The Wonderful 101).
  Mya: [on Sisqo's gaming habit] He'll forget to eat if you don't remind him.
• Ski Mask the Slump God is a big anime fan, referencing Dragon Ball Z in his songs "Lost Souls" (which also mentions One-Punch Man) and "New Age Chip Skylark". His top five anime are Mob Psycho 100, Attack on Titan, Claymore, Hunter × Hunter, and Black Clover.

Reggae

• Bob Marley admired Curtis Mayfield, to the point of directly quoting from a song of The Impressions in "One Love". He was also interested in The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. He also said to a reggae fanzine that he'd love to sit down with Stevie Winwood and in his own words, "pick his brain on music".
• Lee Scratch Perry has a love for James Brown.

World Music

• Fela Kuti was a huge fan of jazz and James Brown, which shouldn't surprise anyone. But when asked whom he considered his most favorite musician of all time he gave an unexpected answer, given how much he railed against western culture: George Frederic Handel!
• Brazilian Gilberto Gil has said that meeting Fela Kuti in real life changed his life: "I felt I was a tree replanted and able to flourish".

Other (artists that need to be sorted out and categorized)

• All Time Low frontman Alex Gaskarth is a StarCraft fan and his Twitter account contains a few gems of geekiness, including a pickup line involving Minecraft. Also, the background image for his profile is of Captain Planet.
• Andrew Lloyd Webber turns out to be a huge board-game fan. In the book Dice Men, according to Games Workshop founder Ian Livingstone. Andrew approached GW with an idea about making a board game about insurance. It would later become GW product Calamity.
• Acoustic guitarist Andy Mckee owns a Wii, a 360 and quite a few PC games. He absolutely loves Tribes. Video Games and guitar are apparently the only two hobbies he has.
• Arjen Anthony Lucassen. All songs on the two Star One albums are inspired by scifi films. The first album takes its inspiration from movies set in space, while the second gets its inspiration from post apocalyptic and Dystopian movies.
• Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies is a gamer and a fan of Red vs. Blue. He even worked with Rooster Teeth when he voiced Captain Butch Flowers on Red vs. Blue and played the title role in Captain Dynamic, a promotional series for City of Heroes.
  • Plus, the band got Rooster Teeth to do some PSAs for use during a tour.
  • Ed is also a die-hard Pinball fan who regularly attends expos and hangs out on the Pinside.com forums. The music video for "Silverball" — which features nearly a dozen pinball machines — was filmed in Ed's basement with his games.
• Brad Paisley has made his nerdiness known on "Online" and "Welcome to the Future", among others. The video for "Start a Band" also makes several (accurate) Guitar Hero references.
• Chris Barretto, vocalist of Monuments and Ever Forthright (as well as being a former vocalist of Periphery), is a massive fan of Battlestar Galactica (2003), claiming the show as one of his main inspirations for the story of The Amanuensis. Not only is this the case, but the song "Horcrux" and the part of the storyline told in that song is very much a Shout-Out to Harry Potter (the main character has to deliver a piece of himself to the gatekeepers of the Garden of Sankhara in order to proceed on his quest). He also has a tattoo of a Dalek from Doctor Who.
• Matthew Sweet was an anime fan before it was popular. His 1991 music video "Girlfriend" was composed almost entirely of scenes from Space Adventure Cobra. Lum from Urusei Yatsura (whom he reportedly has a tattoo of) was featured prominently in his "I'll Be Waiting" video.
  • "Evangeline" is a song about the eighties independent comic of that name - specifically, it's a song about the title character from the viewpoint of another character, Jonny Six.
• Yoshiki Hayashi likes fashion, KISS, Heavy Metal, Korean pop, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, and The Twilight Saga.
• Sugizo is a sci-fi fan.
• John Mayer once dropped over $1,700 on a rare unopened Boba Fett action figure. Mayer has said he isn't even a collector of action figures and bought it on impulse.
• Singer and musical artist Utada Hikaru is an avid fan of Tetris, and is quite skilled at it too. She was invited to an official Tetris DS tournament, and after an obvious case of Damn You, Muscle Memory! in her first two matches, she managed to win 26 of the following 28 matches for an overall 26-4 record.
• This entry on Mandy Moore's Twitter page is cause for a certain degree of optimism...
  • Oh, she's got a weirdo streak a mile wide. She covered New-Wavey XTC at one point and is a big fan of outsider musician Jandek. She just had really good handlers back when her career was peaking. Now that's she married to crazy country singer Ryan Adams (himself an avid 80's gamer), she probably doesn't care anymore.
• Not an exactly well-known personality, but it's still worth mentioning Disarmonia Mundi harsh vocalist Claudio Ravinale once posted a thread on the band's message board about MMORPGs. See for yourself.
• Joe Satriani, whose music includes references to Star Trek ("Borg Sex", "Party on the Enterprise", which, after legal discussion regarding samples of sound FX from the Enterprise fell through, was renamed "Crowd Chant"), Kurt Vonnegut ("Ice 9"), the Silver Surfer ("Surfing With The Alien", "Back To Shalla-Bal", and "The Power Cosmic 2000", as well as his custom Ibanez with a bas-relief of the Silver Surfer from the album cover of Surfing With the Alien.), and space travel ("Redshift Riders", based on "the idea that in the future, when people can travel throughout space, they will theoretically take advantage of the cosmological redshift effect so they can be swung around large planetary objects and get across the universe a lot faster than normal."). He also has a song about a giant robot that learns to rock.
• Eddie Argos, the lead singer of Art Brut, is a huge DC Comics fan, especially Booster Gold. There was an interview with him on the radio during which he and the host started geeking out over upcoming comics for like five minutes.
• Tony Kakko of Sonata Arctica is a World of Warcraft player. In fact, he got the idea for the title of the Sonata Arctica album The Days of Grays from one of his guild members.
• Ronni Le Tekro, guitarist of TNT is a fan of Halo, even collaborating with a choir in performing music from the series. It should be noted he hates Guitar Hero however.
• Machinae Supremacy is quite possibly the only band that rivals Blind Guardian in geekiness. Their songs tend to sit in three camps. The first is a political camp that attacks the RIAA and those who blindly allow corporate corruption to affect music and art. The second is based on various pieces of media with songs based on Serial Experiments Lain ("The Wired"), The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask ("Missing Link"), World of Warcraft ("Loot, Burn, Rape, Kill, Repeat") and Masters of the Universe ("Return to Snake Mountain") among others. The third camp is covering famous pop songs simply because it's funny. Their work has been featured prominently in In the Groove and they wrote and performed the soundtrack to the indie game Jets N Guns. To top it all off, they happily avert Digital Piracy Is Evil and are proud supporters of The Pirate Bay in their ongoing legal battle.
  • Given the fact that they have songs named Action Girl and Crouching Camper, Hidden Sniper, there's a good chance that at least one member of the band is a troper.
• Of Disturbed, David Draiman is an avid gamer, saying his all-time favorite is the Resident Evil series. Also, the band liked Spawn enough to choose Todd McFarlane for their Ten Thousand Fists album artwork, then later to animate the video for their cover of "Land of Confusion". They later went seeking out the former Top Cow artist David Finch to design the artwork for Indestructible. They also once commissioned Raymond Swanland for Asylum, popular with Dark Horse Comics and Magic: The Gathering illustrations. On that note, the band has their own gamer tag on Xbox Live to invite fans to gaming sessions.
  • He also has three degrees in Business Administration, Philosophy, and Political Science.
• Charlie Simpson, singer of Fightstar (as well as Busted), is a huge Eva fan and made several songs about it.
• The j-rock band Bump of Chicken are avid gamers and anime fans, to the point that they wrote a song about Rei Ayanami.
  • They also performed the song "Karma" for the Tales of the Abyss anime opening. It can be found here.
  • Not to mention their song "Hello, World!" being featured as the opening for Kekkai Sensen, one of the biggest series in the Spring 2015 season.
• Tim Stevens from Grottomatic grew up on Nintendo, Looney Tunes, and Calvin and Hobbes. He is a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Who, The Fairly OddParents!, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Psych, Gravity Falls, Wander over Yonder, and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. He has even written songs for some of these titles.
  • He was a fan of Star Wars as a child, but he lost interest shortly after seeing Revenge of the Sith. He still watched The Force Awakens just because "it's just something that everyone will see."
• The X Factor winner Leona Lewis based one of her tours around Labyrinth.
  • She also happens to be a big fan of the Resident Evil and Final Fantasy series (even providing the Ending Theme for Final Fantasy XIII, "My Hands".)
• Hayley Williams of Paramore has cosplayed as Saya and Re-l during performances.
  • She has also professed a love for zombie-themed video games and is a fan of professional wrestling.
• Turkish singer Oğuzhan Koç. If you can create a catchy, crowd-pleasing tune based off of nothing more than [[Street Fighter a ball of fire thrown from the hands of a wandering Japanese hobo, then you easily qualify. One can only wonder what would have happened if he was there on Çok Güzel Hareketler Bunlar for the actual Street Fighter-themed episode.
• Jonathan Coulton, who is practically the physical embodiment of this trope.
• Chris Webby is obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and has the Autobots emblem tattoed on his chest.
• Jason Mraz seems to be something of a gamer. The lyrics for The Dynamo of Volition:
  Kid Icarus on the transistor
  Nintendo's been givin' me the blisters.
  • He also added a K-On! sample twice in his song "Try Try Try" for no real reason.
• Emilie Autumn is a huge Star Wars fan and wants to play the main theme live someday. She's also a bookworm, and really knows her literature.
• Escape the Fate are all huge fans of Halo. "The Guillotine" and "This War Is Ours (The Guillotine Part Two)" are both about said game franchise.
  • But this could just make them gamer-bros.
  • M. Shadows is actually appearing in an upcoming documentary about competitive gaming called "Die Noobs".
• Christina Grimmie to the point where her YouTube username is called [[zeldaxlove64. She also put NES sounds in her song "Counting." And that doesn't even touch the fringe of her One of Us-ness. She also hosted a game review series on Disney's YouTube gaming channel.
  • She was also a Tokyo Ghoul fan. When she was killed in June 2016, the manga's author Sui Ishida drew a tribute to her.
• Mindless Self Indulgence's members are geeks through and through.
  • Their first album, Tight, was mixed on an Atari computer.
  • One of the songs from Jimmy Urine and Steve, Righ?s' side project, The Left Rights, is titled "Genesis 16:12." It's a giant homage to the 16 bit gaming era, and the console wars. Another song, titled "I Like The Smell of My Amiga," with its heavily digitized vocals, is possibly a reference to Amiga computers.
  • They wrote a comic book detailing various crazy stories from past tours.
• Tommy Scott collects sci-fi movie figurines and shops at Forbidden Planet. His bandmate Franny Griffiths is an avid gamer - he once stated that the best present he'd ever received from a fan is a Sonic the Hedgehog game, and he's also into Call of Duty and Pro Evolution Soccer.
• Owl City declared in his Twitter he is a Doctor Who and Homestuck fan.
• Rebecca Black is an adorable person, and according to this video, she is also a youtube fan.
• Heather Dale is a longstanding bard for the Society for Creative Anachronism and a fan of Doctor Who.
• Zomby has revealed himself to be a fan of vaporwave, putting together mixes that include tracks by popular (in the community at least) vaporwave artists, such as HKE and Infinity Frequencies, and has even gone so far as to remix a Nmesh track for his album with t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者, The Path to Lost Eden.
• Sunny of Girls' Generation used to play Starcraft, and her fellow group member (and leader) Taeyeon watches Attack on Titan.
• Look at and listen to Juliette. Would you guess that she is a huge gamer, from Myst and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis to Cities: Skylines and This War of Mine, and was even promoted to preside over the French public fund for video games ?
• The members of Man or Astro-man?'s iconic 1990s lineup were huge fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the admiration seemed to be mutual during the Joel era.
• Filipina singer and musical actress, Lea Salonga, is a huge fan of Game of Thrones, Westworld, and Voltron: Legendary Defender, and enjoys playing Assassin's Creed.
• Geoff Wigington of Waterparks loves The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and Nintendo in general, he's also been seen wearing Sonic the Hedgehog and Kingdom Hearts merch. During a Kerrang Reader Interview, when they were asked about their chances of beating the ex-bassists in the "Gloom Boys" video, Geoff gave us this gem when the band was in the process of answering: "If you're confident you can boost your stats at least 10 points in a fight." Must be a Status Buff. He even goes to conventions!
  • Awsten Knight has more of a casual interest in stereotypically nerdy things, but is a blatant music fanboy with other interests in horror movies and network comedies like The Office (US). He's previously responded to a question about "Marvel or DC" with "Which one's Spider-Man?" and explained that his experience with PC games ended when he failed to cook the shrimp on the tutorial island in Runescape. He's also been very supportive of fanworks of various kinds made for Waterparks.
• In addition to signing onto Repo! The Genetic Opera and releasing singles called "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper" and "Adventures of the Love Crusader," Sarah Brightman is extremely into space, hanging out with Buzz Aldrin; meeting her current partner, an aeronautics engineer, through the mutual interest in space; and, in 2014, paid $52 million dollars for a spot on a tri to the International Space Station, spending several months at NASA and in Russia training in zero-g simulators. However, the trip ultimately fell through.
  • She'd also released an album in 2013 tying in with the space theme, called Dreamchaser.
• Toshimitsu Deyama: The English-speaking fandom of figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu often joke that no matter how much of a fanyu you are, you can't be more of a fanyu than ToshI. He collaborated with Hanyu for two of the skaters' programs during Fantasy on Ice - Crystal Memories and Masquerade. He stayed up the night before the event to make a bedazzled Winnie the Pooh shirt (Hanyu's Good Luck Charm) and tweeted often about Hanyu's competitions. He coined the nickname "Yuzu-numa" (Yuzu swamp) because once you get into the fandom, you can't get out.

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