{"id":1489,"date":"2022-07-11T17:15:03","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T00:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2025-01-08T17:53:27","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T01:53:27","slug":"music-the-most-unwanted-song-endures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/music-the-most-unwanted-song-endures\/","title":{"rendered":"music: the Most Unwanted Song endures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Most Unwanted Song (FULL VERSION)\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-gPuH1yeZ08?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">From 1997 but still golden-ly unwanted<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Way back in 1977 I read a brief article in <em>Wired<\/em> magazine about artists <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Komar_and_Melamid\">Komar &amp; Melamid<\/a>&#8216;s project to make the most unwanted song (and most wanted song) based on a rigorous consumer preference survey. When I got to &#8220;an opera singer rapping cowboy lyrics over tuba and bagpipes&#8221; I literally reverse-snorted coffee all over the magazine and fell off my chair. I wasn&#8217;t ROTFLMAO, but I couldn&#8217;t finish reading it through the tears in my eyes from laughing so hard \ud83e\udd23. I&#8217;ve spent hours trying to find that short article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.diaart.org\/shop\/books\/the-most-wanted-song-the-most-unwanted-song-audio-cd-media\">ordered<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discogs.com\/release\/807936-Komar-Melamid-Dave-Soldier-The-Peoples-Choice-Music\">the CD<\/a> from a museum gift shop; I later saw Komar &amp; Melamid&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.komarandmelamid.org\/chronology\/1994_1997_peoples\/\">People&#8217;s Choice exhibition<\/a> of the most wanted and most unwanted paintings (they commissioned that survey in a dozen countries, and the USA and China have similar preferences); I went to a pretty incoherent but entertaining art talk by them. They are damn good conceptual artists, and both the audio and visual versions of Most Wanted\/Unwanted should make you think about the nature and purpose of art. Now that computers can generate <a href=\"\/blog\/2020\/06\/computers-generating-art\/\">visual art and music<\/a>, their ideas are more relevant than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time I use a Macintosh at work, and ripped my CD so a co-worker could listen to it. At the time iTunes would by default share your music library across the local network. Strangers would come find me after finding &#8220;spage&#8217;s Music Library&#8221; on the network containing exactly two songs. &#8220;That&#8217;s all I need&#8221; was my gnomic reply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Commenters saying &#8220;But I like \u2018The Most Unwanted Song\u2019, it&#8217;s more interesting than the pablum from &lt;insert pop tart du jour>&#8221; completely misunderstand the point. Komar &amp; Melamid paid for a detailed survey of people&#8217;s preferences for song length, instruments, timbres, vocal style, subjects, song structure, tempo changes, etc. Then they, with composer Dave Soldier, made a song following the dictates of the most unwanted of all those consumer preferences: loooonnnng, tuba and accordion, extremely high and low pitches, opera singer and children&#8217;s chorus yelling, cowboys and national anthems, protest lyrics and commercial slogans, dead-pony slow tempo then manic, etc. They <em>did not<\/em> try to make a unlikable or bad song! Besides, it&#8217;s easy to like the song for 6 minutes, but at 14 minutes when the opera singer and bratty children&#8217;s choir sing the U.S. national anthem, even the coolest of the cool start to sweat, and there&#8217;s still 7 more minutes to sit through. I&#8217;ve listened to it many times, but probably only thrice from start to finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Commenters also ask for an updated song, no doubt hoping it will skewer aspects of today&#8217;s music they find awful. But that&#8217;s also missing the point. Komar, Melamid, and Soldier would make a different song today because popular music is different today, not because people in the 2020s started digging opera singers and distorted protest monologues. A new survey could add new questions (How much autotune do you like? How far off the grid do you like your beats to drag?), but that&#8217;s weirdly specific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Most Wanted Song\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZqNVaKB9yY0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;The Most Wanted Song&#8221; is fine. Again the cool music fans say they don&#8217;t like it, but you can hear how it&#8217;s assembled according to the most wanted of the same song characteristics. And Living Colour&#8217;s Vernon Reid plays the guitar solo!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Way back in 1977 I read a brief article in Wired magazine about artists Komar &amp; Melamid&#8216;s project to make the most unwanted song (and most wanted song) based on a rigorous consumer preference survey. When I got to &#8220;an &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/music-the-most-unwanted-song-endures\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2260,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions\/2260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}