Can you believe the first month of 2016 is almost over? I’d say the past four weeks have been non-stop. I started out finishing the January issue of USGlass, which features our first-ever “Made in North America” report, went straight into our annual listing of the nation’s top contract glaziers (look for that in February) and am now working on our annual guide to glass and metal fabrication (coming in the March issue). Shew! Time for some light-hearted blog chatter.

By now you probably know the rock star David Bowie passed away earlier this month after a quiet battle with cancer. I’m always intrigued to find correlation between pop culture and the glass industry, and found one when reading of Bowie’s passing. He had a song titled, “Thru’ these Architect’s Eyes” in which he mentions the glass-loving architect Philip Johnson as well as Richard Rogers.

So, that got me thinking. And I wondered, how many other songs reference architecture/architects? I did some digging and here are some that I found:

• Supreme Architecture by Wu Tang Clan

• So Long Frank Lloyd Wright, by Simon and Garfunkle

• Hello Great Architect of the Universe by Hella

I’m sure there are others; even some about glass? Of course. There’s Walking on Broken Glass by Annie Lennox. And we certainly can’t forget Heart of Glass by Blondie.

Song titles were just the start of my investigation into the worlds of pop-rock culture and architecture-glass. How about album covers? When I was a kid album covers were almost as exciting as the music itself. I dug around and found a few covers that also mix well with the music-glass-architecture theme:

Eminem, Recovery (2010)

Azari & III, Azarai & III (2012)

Peter Bjorn and John, Writer’s Block (2006)

Air, 10,000 Hz Legend (2004)

Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

Owl City, Ocean Eyes (2009)

The Streets, Computers & Blues (2011)

I am sure there are many other examples and would love to hear your picks for glassy-architectural songs and album covers. Be sure and email me at erogers@glass.com and I will run an industry compilation in a future blog.

And by the way, if you’ve not yet read the latest blog from Nick St. Denis be sure and do so HERE. You’ll find even more great examples of our industry and pop culture colliding.