I'm listening to Faith Hill's "Breathe" for the first time as I type this, and I was not expecting it to sound like this at all. "XKCD" and "pop country" had never been linked in my mind before, even tangentially. If there was any music genre I had expected XKCD to link itself, it'd have been chaphop or nerdcore or vaporwave* or something like that. But I digress.
I have to confess that I didn't get either of the references, so the crossover was completely lost on me. My usual criticism of XKCD's obscure jokes does still apply though. More people would understand this joke, and more people would find it funny, if the setup included the background information to the punchline. Obviously it'd make for a longer comic, but it's not like long, detailed, or complex comics haven't been made in the past.
Also, it's probably just my /mu/sical bias showing, but I'd have gone with the Pink Floyd song. It's the second track on the second-best selling album of all time! It's a more widely known reference, and a more dignified one too, more suited to the discovery of new planets. And -and- it's not like making the reference less esoteric would be handing the joke to the audience when the other half of the joke is about exoplanet spetctoscopy.
*I actually think vaporwave is a legitimate subgenre to plunderphonics, and I've done my own little experiment with it, but can't you just imagine Randy listening to it? This really intense look on his face, and he's going "yes, oh man, capitalism. Japan".
i did not know it was a real song or that faith hill was an artist. i somewhat expected faith to be either the scientist or specifically the O2 peak named "faith hill" because it gives faith to the habitability of the exoplanet. the lyrics are serendipitously capturing the mechanism of exoplanet spectroscopy perfectly so i assumed it was original text from XKCD. without knowing the references, this piece is not funny to me but deeply mooving. it elevates a rational proccess of science into a poetic almost religious experience. it has to be that song and these lyrics, from this artist, to work the way it does.
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