As Discussed at Lunch

As discussed at lunch…

From This American Life episode “Numbers”:

Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar hired a polling firm to investigate what people want to see in paintings. Then, using the data, they painted what people want. It turned out to be a landscape, with a mountain and a lake, and deer, and a family, and George Washington.

 

Then they applied these techniques to music, with composer David Soldier. This “most wanted” version combines the elements the 500 people surveyed said they wanted most — love, soprano sax, humble ambition, tenor sax, a marriage proposal, cheesy electronic drum fills, working the night shift, string swells, power chords, and saccharine male/female harmonies — into an easy listening-style adult contemporary sound that could peel the paint off of the Space Shuttle

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/listening_post/files/KomarMelamid_The-Most-Wanted-Song.mp3

(For the worst song) Komar & Melamid and David Soldier’s list of undesirable elements included holiday music, 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.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/listening_post/files/KomarMelamid_The-Most-UnwantedSong.mp3

The most unwanted song is 25 minutes long but is hilarious!

The whole article can be heard here and is part of act 2 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=88