Songs, Wanted And Un-

An online poll conducted in the ’90s set Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier on a quest to create the most annoying song ever. After gathering data about people’s least favorite music and lyrical subjects, they did the unthinkable: they combined them into a single monstrosity, specifically engineered to sound unpleasant to the maximum percentage of listeners.

Amazingly, this "most unwanted music" contains little dissonance - that would have been too easy. For the most part, they seem to have tried to assemble these elements in a listenable way. The list of undesirables included holiday music, German, bagpipes, pipe organ, a children’s chorus and the concept of children in general (really?), Wal-Mart, cowboys, political jingoism, George Stephanopoulos, Coca Cola, bossanova synths, banjo ferocity, harp glissandos, oompah-ing tubas and much, much more. It’s actually a fascinating listen, worthwhile for the opera rapping alone.

I made it thru all 22 minutes of it.

Click here to hear the "Most Unwanted Song"

How far'd ya get?

Adversely, these musical mashing geniuses (just look at them over there, so proud of themselves) also used the informatio gathered in the poll and constructed the "most wanted music", and I gotta tell ya, even tho it's a quarter the length, I prefer the "unwanted" track better. This "wanted" track includes a female voice, love, a soprano sax, something referred to as "humble ambition", a Van Halen type guitar solo, cheesy electronic drum fills, string swells, and a mix of (as far as I can tell) Bruce Springsteen and Joe Cocker, working the night shift, a marriage proposal, etc. all slapped together into an easy listening-style adult contemporary sound that could peel the paint off of the Space Shuttle.

You be the judge.

Click here to hear the "Most Wanted Song"