‘The Most Unwanted Song’: The 1997 song designed only to be hated
When musicians release new material, their primary aim is typically for it to be well-received.
Granted, this isn’t always easy, given the inherently subjective nature of musical tastes; what profoundly moves one person might not necessarily resonate with another. At the same time, music isn’t always confined to a conventional sense of ‘happiness’, but it can still wield a significant impact if it addresses something profound. Similarly, an energetic and infectious song has the potential to elevate spirits. Regardless, the overarching goal for most music typically revolves around forging an emotional connection.
In the latter part of the 1990s, painters Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid had already made a series of ‘The Most Wanted/Unwanted Paintings’, each based on a set of attributes people in a certain country liked – and didn’t like – about paintings. The project was called ‘The People’s Choice’ and used polls to find out what people wanted to see the most and the least in art, all as a way of mimicking the American democratic process.
The intention behind the process was also to redefine the role of artists as leaders. Komar and Melamid held the belief that the general public served as a suitable evaluator of art, in contrast to established historical norms. This parallels the way the broader American public is entrusted with the responsibility of electing the President.
What made the project so fascinating was that it unintentionally exposed the limits of treating art like a democratic process. While polls can identify familiar preferences and broad trends, they struggle to account for the unpredictability and emotional resonance that often define truly memorable artistic work. Great songs frequently succeed because they surprise listeners or challenge expectations rather than simply delivering a calculated combination of popular ingredients.
The popularity of ‘The Most Unwanted Song’ also revealed how audiences are often drawn toward novelty, chaos and absurdity in ways that conventional market research cannot easily predict. By pushing disliked musical elements to such an exaggerated extreme, the song transformed into a kind of surreal comedy piece that listeners found entertaining precisely because it felt so unnatural. In contrast, ‘The Most Wanted Song’ highlighted how formulaic attempts to engineer universal appeal can sometimes result in music that feels strangely lifeless despite ticking all the supposed boxes of popularity.
When American musician and neuroscientist David Soldier discovered their work, he was so intrigued by the psychological element that he enlisted them to create a musical version of their work, divided by two opposing elements: ‘The Most Wanted Song’ and ‘The Most Unwanted Song’. Interestingly, the latter became the most popular of the two.
‘The Most Wanted Song’, as the name suggests, integrated the musical components that survey participants expressed a desire for. Instruments like saxophone, electric guitar, bass, piano, and drums, along with lyrics centred on themes of love, were identified as highly sought-after by the respondents.
Its counterpart, ‘The Most Unwanted Song’, was crafted to include both lyrical and musical features that garnered disapproval from a majority of participants in a survey. These disliked elements encompassed bagpipes, cowboy-style music, a fusion of opera vocals and rap, and a children’s choir singing about various holidays while encouraging listeners to “do all your shopping at Walmart!”.
In terms of composition, ‘The Most Unwanted Song’ takes abrupt and frequent turns, transitioning between diverse styles such as drum machine-infused hip hop led by a tuba, atonal harp and organ interjections, bagpipes, what might be termed “elevator music”, polka, and country. These elements are intertwined, sometimes coexisting, with various instances of spontaneous improvisation that Soldier aptly refers to as “slams”.
In 1997, the trio debuted the song in New York, where Komar and Melamid played a bass drum and Soldier a banjo. They were also joined by soprano Dina Emerson, a large ensemble conducted by Norman Yamada, and a children’s choir. The notable popularity of the unwanted version speaks to the human instinct of glorifying something intentionally bad – we often love to hate art and find joy in laughing at things that seem absurd.
According to many at the time, ‘The Most Wanted Song’ actually seemed a little too harsh and dull compared to ‘The Most Unwanted Song’, which naturally caused many to veer away from it. Equally, ‘The Most Unwanted Song’ so intensely adhered to negative elements that it became deemed ‘so bad it’s good‘, achieving the difficult task of making people want to go back and revisit again.
