[Tsundoku]

You know how you get aurally assaulted by some of the complete garbage they dare to call music these days, and you think "the people who buy this must be f**king morons"? Well, as it turns out you may be right. Sort of.

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http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story...26-7484,00.html

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US student Virgil Griffith does 'study' aligning musical preferences to intelligence levels

By Ian Rakowski

NEWS.com.au

March 12, 2009 12:01am

Sweet note ... Lovers of Beethoven will be pleased to know they top the pile in intelligence / Virgil Griffith
Lil Wayne

IF you’re a fan of Lil’ Wayne, chances are you’re, well, stupid.

Love Beyonce? You’re in major strife. And if you love the music of the Lord, the news is bad for you, too.

A California Tech student has matched music preferences to US high school marks, and come up with correlations that will send brainiacs scurrying for their iPods.

PhD student Virgil Griffith’s “somewhat unscientific” study showed the smartest students listened to Beethoven, Counting Crows and Sufjan Stevens. Radiohead and Ben Folds Five also appealed to big brains.

Lil’ Wayne, Beyonce and Soca took the cringeworthy honours at the other end of the scale.

But before you relax, considered this: jazz, gospel and pop were all well down the ladder – and even classical music was behind the general pack, trailing acts like Snow Patrol and Kanye West.

According to the data, people who listen to “indie” music were the smartest.

Does your musical taste make you smart or dumb? Tell us below.

AC/DC was the only Australian band to feature, landing just below the average SAT mark.

The poll won’t be music to the ears of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has a penchant for the classics. Malcolm Turnbull might want to update his preferences too: Last year, he revealed he had a soft spot for rock & roll, but that leaves him in the lower third of the group polled by Griffith.

No such problems for US President Barack Obama – who reportedly has an IQ of around 130. One of his favourite artists, Bob Dylan, is among the top eight performers.

He has an unlikely intellectual equal in Miley Cyrus, whose love for U2 rockets her up in the smarts stakes.

Despite the poor showing of the classics, Dean of the Institute of Music, Dr Ras Marcellino, said music could play a part in developing intelligence.

He cited the “Mozart factor”, where parents play classical music to young children as mental stimulation.

“People believe that if you played them Mozart their intelligence would improve. There’s nothing conclusive but it looks likely,” Dr Marcellino said.

And appreciation of genteel classical tunes was no measure of brain power, he said.

“You get these kids who listen to pretty full on death metal, and then they go off and do high level mathematics and computing,” he said.

Dr Marcellino, who is a fan of Coldplay, laughed when told he would have middle-of-the-road intelligence.

Mr Griffiths says his favourite band is Daft Punk and he has “recently been listening most to music by the fine Australian musician Scott Matthew.”

Funnily enough, neither of them made it onto his graph.

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Go view the article for the cheesy graph.

Personally I'd argue that anyone who says they're a big fan of Radiohead may indeed be smart, but it's far more likely that they too, like Thom Yorke, are talentless self-indulgent wankers.

EDIT: hmmm, using "self-indulgent" and "wankers" in the same sentence was probably a redundancy. Ah well, mea culpa and all those other Latin pretensions ...

Or is it all just a matter of taste NOT being linked to intellect?

Cheers,

La Sombra, believes "indie" music is just as likely to be shit as rap. It just uses longer words.

EDIT 2: is it just me or should "Fall Out Boy" be renamed "Rectal Prolapse Boy" because that's the kind of fallout their drivel inspires?

This post has been edited by Sombra: 12 March 2009 - 10:38 AM

[Aptorian]

What a load of crap. I hate these kinds of surveys. Thousands or even millions of dollars thrown at comepletely useless crap.

There's absolutly nothing to gain from the article because there's so many other factors playing in.

Intellectual people listen to Bethoven because they think that's what they're supposed to do because they're smart.

[Ain't_It_Just_]

I heard about this. I swear to God, you constantly hear about all these new studies from universities all the time, you can't figure out what's real or not.

I'm a Queen fan...does that make me a transdimensional kleptomaniac?

-AIJ, hoping Frook is a servile superhero...

[Hinter]

So people who like Snow Patrol are more intelligent than people who like Hendrix. What a load of old toss

[Dr Trouble]

I like Lil Wayne.

[Illuyankas]

Indie kids are teh smratest now? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[cauthon]

So how smart would I be according to this 'survey'?

[Lisheo]

Lmao indie kids are clever? He's never seen the majority of young people in Ireland then.

Also, to be fair, high school exam marks aren't really shows of intelligence. You can't compare the work of someone intelligent to someone who's studied for five days for an exam, and say both have the same IQ if they both got the same score.

"Survey" MAKES LISH ANGRY!

[Darkwatch]

He's getting the cart before the horse.
The music doesn't make you smart, and you don't listen to it because your smart, it's a social thing.

A real study, one that was not "somewhat unscientific" and it showed that still in several highschools some of the high grade students are still socialy malajusted, which means they're not popular, which means they'll counter the popular bunch with music that isn't what those people are listening to.

I agree money wasted on a study that apparently does not have all the scientific safe guards it should have had for a university level doctorate study. Just done for sensationalist bullshit.

[RodeoRanch]

Stupid people. Bane of my life.

[alestar]

If smart people listen to Goo Goo Dolls and the Killers, then I don't want to be smart...

[Macros]

Hendrix is over rated tosh anyway

but I find myself totally unsurprised that lil wayne is at the bottom of this "study" I think were it carreid further and some kind of actual science brought into play, he would still be the bottom, white trash thinking they're gangsta rappers, the main fan base as far as I can see about here.

[Hinter]

Macros, on Mar 12 2009, 06:11 PM, said:

Hendrix is over rated tosh anyway

I'm....speechless!

[Macros]

at my genious statement?
He can't sing, alot of his stuff is discombobulated sillyness

[Coco with marshmallows]

tbh though,

what about people (like myself) who listen to a very eclectic mix of music?

for example, my mp3 player only has about a hundred songs on it.

before anyone asks, no it isn't a size limit, I just don't feel the need to have more than that on me at any one time.

after all, I remember personal cassette players - 90 mins ftw.

anyway, the point is that the music contained on my player ranges from the weird (some canto-pop from my trip to China a few years ago)
to the classis (beethoven)
to awesome rock (queen, ac/dc)
to guilty pop classics (the Divinyls)
and so on.

frankly, i don't buy the music = intelligence argument.
by that factor, where would deaf people rate?

[Macros]

a higher plane of some kind, they can't be dragged down by hearing cRap on the radio

[frookenhauer]

Ain't_It_Just_, on Mar 12 2009, 10:27 AM, said:

-AIJ, hoping Frook is a servile superhero...

WAT? Preese explain! and whats with all the flowery stuff master chief?

[Mezla PigDog]

Quote

I've listened to artists who after listening to I thought to myself "Wow... loving this rubbish says a lot about someone and how much they got going on in their head." Could one's musical tastes say something about intelligence? How about SAT scores? Well, like any good scientist, I decided to see how well my personal experience matches reality. How might one do this?

Well, here's one idea.

• Get a friend of yours to download, using Facebook, the ten most frequent "favorite music" at every college via that college's Network Statistics page on Facebook (manually -- as not to violate Facebook's ToS). These ten "favorite musics" are perhaps indicative of the overall intellectual milieu of that college.
  
• Download the average SAT/ACT score (from CollegeBoard) for students attending every college.
  
• Presto! We have a correlation between musical tastes and dumbitude (smartitude too)!
  Music <=> Colleges <=> Average SAT Scores
  
  
• Plot the average SAT of each "favorite music", discarding those with too few samples to have a reliable average.
  
• Post the results on your website, pondering what the Internet will think of it.

Like any good scientist, I had to check out his methodology. I spit on his science.

[Darkwatch]

Mezla PigDog, on Mar 12 2009, 07:38 PM, said:

Quote

I've listened to artists who after listening to I thought to myself "Wow... loving this rubbish says a lot about someone and how much they got going on in their head." Could one's musical tastes say something about intelligence? How about SAT scores? Well, like any good scientist, I decided to see how well my personal experience matches reality. How might one do this?

Well, here's one idea.

• Get a friend of yours to download, using Facebook, the ten most frequent "favorite music" at every college via that college's Network Statistics page on Facebook (manually -- as not to violate Facebook's ToS). These ten "favorite musics" are perhaps indicative of the overall intellectual milieu of that college.
  
• Download the average SAT/ACT score (from CollegeBoard) for students attending every college.
  
• Presto! We have a correlation between musical tastes and dumbitude (smartitude too)!
  Music <=> Colleges <=> Average SAT Scores
  
  
• Plot the average SAT of each "favorite music", discarding those with too few samples to have a reliable average.
  
• Post the results on your website, pondering what the Internet will think of it.

Like any good scientist, I had to check out his methodology. I spit on his science.

I'm a historian, and this is patently insulting.
So I'm going to join you and spit, and I'm sick right now so the stuff he's going to get will be bad.

[Ain't_It_Just_]

Frookenhauer, on Mar 13 2009, 09:15 AM, said:

Ain't_It_Just_, on Mar 12 2009, 10:27 AM, said:

-AIJ, hoping Frook is a servile superhero...

WAT? Preese explain! and whats with all the flowery stuff master chief?

Think nothing of it, dear Frookster. Just that if you were a pageboy, then our titanic ROFLBATTLE would swing in my direction. Hee hee.

And considering my notorious Halo-status in this forum, I've decided to insinuate myself with the common man. Damnit, now I sound like a Communist.

I hereby join the spitting-on-science group. Who does this guy think he's convincing?
@Mez

Didn't know you were a historian! Quick quiz: who won the Battle of Hastings?