Music is timeless, but do you know who is the bestselling musician of all time, or the earliest song that was ever recorded in history?
Click start to play today’s Word Search, where you can pick out musical instruments.
Here are four interesting facts from the world of music that may surprise you:
1. The world’s oldest song
The song was discovered in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit in the early 1950s, by a team of French archaeologists. They uncovered 29 clay tablets full of music, but only one of them – named Hurrian Hymn (Text H6) – was complete enough to allow for musicians and scientists to reconstruct it in recent times. The melody was preserved for 3,400 years and written in the Cuneiform text of the ancient Hurrian language.
2. The world’s bestselling solo artist
With more than 1 billion sales across the globe, the king of rock and roll – American singer Elvis Presley – still holds the title of the bestselling solo artist of all time, according to the Guinness World Records website. He ruled over the music scene in the 1950s and 1960s, and passed away in 1977, but his work is timeless and still appeals to a wide audience.
3. Silence as music
In 1952, American experimental composer John Cage released a song called 4’33” – it was a recording of silence that lasted for four minutes and 33 seconds. It quickly became one of the most controversial music works of the 20th century, because it contained what Cage called “the absence of intended sounds”, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. The idea behind the ‘song’ was to show that virtually any sound can be considered to be music – in this case, audiences had to enjoy the sounds of their immediate surroundings while playing the recording.
4. The most streamed song
From the 20th century, the most streamed song ever is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which first reached the top spot in UK charts in 1975. It hit the number one spot again in 1991 after the death of the band’s lead vocalist, British singer Freddie Mercury, and ever since, the song has been holding a steady position on streaming platforms like YouTube and Spotify, where it has been streamed over 1.6 billion times.
Play today’s Word Search and dive into the world of music. Let us know if you enjoyed it at games@gulfnews.com.
