One of Us/Musical Freaks

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


See also Heavy Mithril, Nerd Core.

  • DragonForce pretty much has Videogame effects as a trademark in their music, and have admited a passion towards videogames, which makes them total geeks, and therefore, One of Us.
  • If Twitter is to be believed, Ice T is something of a hardcore gamer.
    • That is correct, he did an interview with a xbox magazine about it.
  • Soulja Boy likes Death Note and Dragonball 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.
  • Basshunter's song DOTA (from the album LOL <(^^,)>) is about the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients. The same album features Boten Anna (translated as Now You're Gone), a song about an IRC bot.
  • Snoop Dogg has been a fan of the Tekken series since the 90s. Not only that, but he's set to cameo in a Dogg-themed stage in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, complete with a song performed just for the game.
  • 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 very popular in an era of overblown stadium rock bands like Boston and Kiss. 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.
  • 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. on the same field but turned it down in order to focus on his band.
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Yoshiki Hayashi likes fashion, Kiss, Heavy Metal, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, and FUCKING Twilight.
  • Sugizo is a sci-fi fan.
  • Brian May, 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 a "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.
  • 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.
    • He also quoted Monty Python and the Holy Grail incessantly, if the last Python documentary is to be believed.
      • "I wave my private parts at your aunties. Thankyouverymuch."
  • 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.
  • 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 everyday.
  • 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 afficionado that he appears on the commentary track for 36 Chambers 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 Killa often refer to themselves as Johnny Blaze and Tony Stark, 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".
  • 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".
  • Singer and musical artist Hikaru Utada 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.
  • 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, if this troper remembers correctly.
    • The music video for 'Experimental Film' was a Homestar Runner cartoon.
  • 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.
  • Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello. He's 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.
    • The man 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...
  • Gackt, J-rock artist, voice actor, and real-life Bishonen 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.
    • 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 "Gackt2".
        • 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: The Forsaken City, 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 dogtag in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty with Gackt's name on it.
    • Not only did he appear in Bujingai the Forsaken City, 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.
  • Led Zeppelin. 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".
      • Although it's not the case, you can find plenty of blogs and forums claiming that "Stairway To Heaven" is about The Lord of the Rings.
  • In 2009, Marshall "Eminem" Mathers 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.
  • George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, lead singer for death-metal band Cannibal Corpse, has said, "World of Warcraft is fuckin' life for me."
  • 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 PlayStation 2 months before it came out, along with a Play Station 3 later on. Not to mention his love for anything with Disney's name on it.
  • 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), I don't think she cares 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.
  • 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.
  • Marc Bolan, 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.
  • Underground rapper MF DOOM is quite possibly one of the most obvious cases. His main persona is basically a hip-hop version of Doctor Doom, almost never appearing without a metallic Doom mask. Nerdy references get 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 uses 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."
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 off of (and sample the music tracks of) the Mega Man games.
    • On one of his newest albums, check out Epoch, as he name-checks 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.
  • 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.
  • Many Power Metal bands are made up of massive geeks. For Blind Guardian, this is especially true.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The Strokes once interrupted their own concert to do the theme song from Thundercats.
  • Neil Peart of Rush at least used to be, if the songs Rivendell and The Necromancer are any indication.
  • According to an issue of Hit Parader, Slipknot/Stone Sour vocalist Corey Taylor is an avid comic book fanatic, especially of Spider-Man.
  • 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 super villain in their video for Art Is The Weapon.
    • Lots of celebrities will write a comic series at sometime 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 imprint (during Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol, no less) and at Cartoon Network.
    • 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 rocking through science" as a motto.
  • 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.
  • 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 Mahler's Sixth Symphony while under the influence of LSD. Even so, he claimed his bass-playing style was more influenced by Bach than by blues or R&B.
  • 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.
  • Frank Zappa was the quintessential band geek, and he worshiped Igor Stravinsky. Oh, and he loved monster movies.
    • The first record Zappa loved as a teen was Ionisation by Edgard Varèse. He would play it as a test, to see whether someone was cool (though it's easy to imagine he may have enjoyed the more-common reaction: baffled revulsion).
    • Zappa was also a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and it's said that he and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew were in talks to make a movie together before he died.
  • 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 Majoras Mask ("Missing Link"), World of Warcraft ("Loot, Burn, Rape, Kill, Repeat") and He-Man and the 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. Recently they've commissioned Raymond Swanland for their most recent album, 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.
  • According to rumor, The Beatles had considered making a film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings with Stanley Kubrick in 1969.
  • George Harrison was an IMMENSE Monty Python fan. 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 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.
    • Highly plausible, given his fondness for being credited on albums under punny pseudonyms such as "Son of Harry".
      • George Harrison also did walk-on parts in Eric Idle's post-Python work, Rutland Weekend Television, and in the Rutles movie.
  • 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.
  • 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 soundtrack thereof.)
  • 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 a 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.
  • 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.
  • Tori Amos is a huge comic book fan.
  • 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.
  • Radiohead, alternative rock weirdos, made a list of their favorite (or at least Jonny's favorite) video games in a recent blog entry on their website. Among those games are Half-Life, Golden Eye 1997', the artsy fartsy 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 Stockhausen and Penderecki. This shows in his scores for movies such as There Will Be Blood.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The j-rock band Bump of Chicken are avid gamers and anime fans, to the point that they wrote a song about Rei Ayanami.
  • Captain Dan and 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Nightwish songs include references to Dragonlance, Lord of the Rings, and an entire Epic Rocking nerdgasm over the Disney Animated Canon, and Marco 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.
  • Pop Idol winner Leona Lewis based her current tour around Labyrinth.
  • 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.
  • Hayley Williams of Paramore recently displayed her love for anime by cosplaying during a performance.
  • The similarities to Mello in Madonna's Jump video? They're intentional.
  • Janelle Monáe. For those who don't want to click links: Monáe is 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 entire 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.
  • Several songs from the Grindcore band Discordance Axis' album The Inalienable Dreamless contain Shout Outs to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
  • Chibi, lead singer of The Birthday Massacre, is an avid Sailor Moon fan, and drummer Rhim is a Pokémon 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 video game addiction.
  • Founder/On and off Frontman Matt Good of From First To Last is a huge WoW nerd.
  • Current Van Halen bassist Wolfgan 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 VH-1 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.
  • 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.
  • It almost goes without saying that "Weird Al" Yankovic is One of Us. The video for "White And Nerdy" alone has enough content to outgeek 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.
  • 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.
  • Irish thrashers Gama Bomb are pretty big nerds, as evidenced by their writing songs about Final Fight and Robocop, among others.
  • Despite being cheesy and ham-fistedly religious enough to seem like the second coming of Carman, Christian rapper KJ-52 could almost be considered a Nerd Core emcee due to his Proud to Be a Geek status and references to old school video games, Homestar Runner and other decidedly nerdy things.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Turkish singer Oğuzhan Koç. If you can create a catchy, crowd-pleasing tune based off of nothing more than a ball of fire thrown from the hands of a wandering Japanese hobo (well, more like its Mondegreen, but who's being technical?), 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.
  • 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.
  • In addition to his single Yeah 3X (which sounds like it came from an 8-bit game), Chris Brown has been spotted wearing this [dead link].
  • 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.
  • Christina Aguilera is a gamer and even has a mini-arcade in her house.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Avenged Sevenfold are evidently fans of Call of Duty.
  • Gnarls Barkley performed for an MTV show in Star Wars Costumes.
  • Christina Grimmie. As if her YouTube username (zeldaxlove64) didn't explain everything already, she has NES sounds in her song "Counting." And that doesn't even touch the fringe of her One of Us-ness. She currently hosts a game review series on Disney's YouTube gaming channel.
  • Charles Gillingham of Counting Crows has a Wikipedia account.
  • 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.
  • 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".
  • Acoustic guitarist Andy McKee owns a Wii, a 360 and quite a few PC games. he absolutely loves Starsiege: Tribes. Video Games and guitar are apparently the only two hobbies he has.
  • 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 livestream. He even incorporates video game elements and graphics in his live shows. He also taught himself computer programming, web design and programming, 3D modelling (which is the source for the mau5head he performs in), and flash animation, among other talents.
  • The following is a list of things that inspires Rob Zombie: vintage horror movies, pornos, exploitation films, comic books, star trek, star wars etc. so yeah, Zombie's a huge geek.
  • Apparently Green Day has discovered the internet.
  • David Bowie was the first mainstream artist to release a single for download; indeed, his official website also served as an ISP in the early days. He was also something of a Japanophile, 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.
  • Hip-hop violinist Lindsey Stirling recorded a medley of songs from The Legend of Zelda as well as the main theme from Lord of the Rings. In the video for her Zelda medley she wore prosthetic elf ears and a blue Link costume.
  • 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
  • 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 one of the Mortal Kombat movies, and one of his songs appears in the newest Twisted Metal game.
  • Buffy Sainte-Marie. Yes, the '70s protest singer. She started using computers to record her music in 1981 – three years before the Macontosh was released – which makes her a very early adopter of computers in music.
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