It refers to the system that governs our sense of smell (olfaction) and is a highly evocative word, and while there are many songs about odours, who uses it in lyrics?
A world of smells is very much part of our subconscious, still remains in powerful childhood memories, and is still far more used than we realise, even in modern life dominated by the visual, aural and other senses. As hunter gatherers, our olfactory system was far more important in human evolutionary past in our odorant receptor genes, but remains far more important in other mammals and other species.
Bears have a sense of smell that is around 2,000 times more sensitive than humans. They can smell a carcass that's 20 miles away. Sharks' sense of smell, from the olfactory bulb, is prevalent in two-thirds of its brain, allowing it to sense one drop of blood in the water a mile away. African elephants, for for their own survival necessity, armed with 1,948 scent-detecting genes, can sense water 12 miles away. Dogs, by comparison only have 811 olfactory genes, while humans have 396. The chemosensory system sends signals to our brains via transduction, telling us about the chemical composition of everything, from food to other objects, as well as those we encounter, and can have a strong effect on sexual attraction.
The power of a sense of smell is something, in more recent times, was brought to popularity in the 1985 novel Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer by Patrick Süskind, about a French 18th century orphan who becomes an olfactory genius, learning to control human behaviour by a symphony of smells.
Perfume - Patrick Süskind
But back to the songs. Here are a few samples to get the scent: The alternative, experimental indie band Deerhoof sniff around that primitive, sensory world of picking up smells in A-Town Test Site from 1997's album The Man, The King, The Girl.
A bitter wind pass
Blow scraps from the table.
It whistled in the cracks
An old haunted stable.
Fleas and the flies,
And the home in the stove,
And the fleas and the flies
Miasma sound
A ping in the coke shoot.
Old pendleton rags
And olfactory glue.
Face in the hole,
And closer and farther,
And the face in the hole
Louden Wainwright III meanwhile takes a more matter-of-fact sniff at bit of road kill, in Dead Skunk from his Album III in 1972:
Crossin' the highway late last night
He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right
He didn't see the station wagon car
The skunk got squashed and there you are
You got your
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high heaven
Take a whiff on me, that ain't no rose
Roll up yer window and hold your nose
You don't have to look and you don't have to see
'Cause you can feel it in your olfactory
Chumbawumba meanwhile point out how modern life has killed our senses, not merely in terms of smell but also a wider sense, to smell the dangers of economic exploitation and the falsehood of trickledown economics – in Drip Drip Drip, from their 1997 album.
Your olfactory nerves
All up the spout
You can't smell a rat
When your nose is out
Rent-to-kill
By any other name
Kiss an old flame
Shame, shame, shame
Drip, drip, drip goes the water
And then there's further olfactory senses sought, reaching for what we seem to have lost, in Phi by Canada's indie band The Most Serene Republic, from their 2009 album And The Ever Expanding Universe:
Could you stop and take inhale, olfactory?
Accomplice to expression
It makes itself known by a changing in tone
Invisible reminder more's desired from the fizz of skin
Its umbra reminds me of past beliefs
and the holidays they had.
Empiricism, why'd they not preach that?
So a magic training first
How's about the musk of your own deeds?
Oh how much I want to of your smell
Dewness from the below, morning from the above
Too many developed from the eyes,
Ears, touch and the taste, stories of the waste
The big secrets now
How we've lost and found
Something not quite said,
Until everything's in bed
Any more whiffs of the olfactory in songs, or other cultural references? Feel free to leave your scent in comments.
Want to suggest other examples of this word in song lyrics, or other unusual words or contexts? Does this song make you think of something else? Then feel free to comment below, on the contact page, or on social media: Song Bar Twitter, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube. Please subscribe, follow and share.
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