• Week 2 (January 23, 2019): Galileo, by the Indigo Girls, from 1992. The lyrics may not be a history lesson about Galileo himself, but it's a sweet song.

• Week 3 (January 30, 2019): Rainbow Connection, originally written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher, from the original 1979 Muppet Movie. Kermit the Frog's version was great, but I also really liked Sarah McLachlan's cover.

• Week 4 (February 4, 2019): Blinded by the Light, by Bruce Springsteen. A much more popular version was put out in 1977 by Manfred Mann, but I prefer Bruce's original. What can I say? I'm from New Jersey!

• Week 5 (February 11, 2019): Here Comes the Sun, originally written by George Harrison of the Beatles. The original is great, but again, right now I'm really liking this cover version from Richie Havens in 1970.

• Week 6 (February 18, 2019): You Are (The Sun), by 1980s superstar Lionel Richie.

• Week 7 (February 25, 2019): Good, by relatively obscure (but awesome!) folk singer John Gorka. The lines about stars, skies, and night are what drew me to this song.

• Week 7 bonus (March 1, 2019): There are just too many songs about stars to limit it to just one per week! So we heard Swinging on a Star, covered by "Big Dee Irwin and Little Eva" in 1963. This is probably the oldest recording we'll play in class (and it's even older than that; the original was from a movie in 1944!)

• Week 8 (March 4, 2019): Everybody is a Star, released by funk/soul group Sly and the Family Stone in 1969.

• Week 8 bonus (March 8, 2019): Now that we've reached the intersection of stars and relativistic weirdness, I knew it was time for Starman by David Bowie, released in 1972, but still echoing its way across the cosmos.

• Week 9 (March 11, 2019): Time After Time, released by Cyndi Lauper in 1984. I looked in vain for a song called "Spacetime After Spacetime."

• Week 10 (March 18, 2019): A few weeks ago, I said that a song from 1963 might be the oldest song that I'd play in class. Whoops! Forgot about Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons (particularly "Spring"), first performed only a scant 294 years ago. But la primavera is ever-young!

• Week 10 bonus (March 22, 2019): With fingers crossed for blue skies on spring break, why not listen to Electric Light Orchestra's Mister Blue Sky? You may know it more from the movies.

• Week 11 (April 1, 2019): Since we're starting to talk about our own galactic home, it seems right to listen to 1988's Under the Milky Way from alt-new-wave band The Church.

• Week 12 (April 8, 2019): We're beyond our own galaxy now, so it's gotta be the Beatles' Across the Universe. We got John Lennon's original version... no cover-versions or remixes allowed!

• Week 12 bonus (April 12, 2019): As we start looking at the origins of the entire universe, I think a fitting song is The First, The Last, My Everything, from the smooth, soulful Barry White.

• Week 13 (April 15, 2019): Onwards to the cosmic microwave background, which we observe as the time when the universe turned from opaque to transparent. It's a bit on the nose, but why not celebrate that moment with Johnny Nash's ever-bright hit I Can See Clearly Now?

• Week 14 (April 22, 2019): A song from the current century? I'm as amazed as you are. Thanks to an ASTR-1200 student for suggesting Joywave's Traveling at the Speed of Light, which I hadn't heard prior to this semester.

• Week 15 (April 29, 2019): How do we wrap things up as we get even more speculative and ponder the existence of life elsewhere in the universe? It's back to the 1970s prog-rock well, to hear the transcendent Come Sail Away by Styx!

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