If you're looking to join Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation," you might want to leave your laptop behind, with the new revelation that the single from the artist's 1989 album has the ability to crash computers.
As Microsoft principal software engineer Raymond Chen recalled in an entry for developer blog The Old New Thing, a colleague working in Windows XP product support shared with him that "a major computer manufacturer" discovered how playing the music video for "Rhythm Nation" would crash certain models of laptop computer.
The unnamed computer company discovered in trials that the issue wasn't specific to their own machines, with the power of "Rhythm Nation" also affecting units made by competitors — even crashing nearby machines that weren't playing the song of its video.
"It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used," Chen writes, noting how the manufacturer solved the issue through "adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback."
Chen unfortunately doesn't identify the laptops or hard drives affected, and there isn't any video of a computer crashing while playing the song — so consider yourselves warned before pressing play below.
Resonant frequencies and vibration have been explored by artists and musicians including late composer Alvin Lucier, and outside of musical realms, the sonic phenomenon has even led to bridges collapsing.
In his post, Chen also links to a video capturing engineers affecting the function of hard drives by screaming at them.
Jackson's self-produced Lifetime and A&E documentary Janet premiered earlier this year. Her most recent studio album is 2015's Unbreakable.
As Microsoft principal software engineer Raymond Chen recalled in an entry for developer blog The Old New Thing, a colleague working in Windows XP product support shared with him that "a major computer manufacturer" discovered how playing the music video for "Rhythm Nation" would crash certain models of laptop computer.
The unnamed computer company discovered in trials that the issue wasn't specific to their own machines, with the power of "Rhythm Nation" also affecting units made by competitors — even crashing nearby machines that weren't playing the song of its video.
"It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used," Chen writes, noting how the manufacturer solved the issue through "adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback."
Chen unfortunately doesn't identify the laptops or hard drives affected, and there isn't any video of a computer crashing while playing the song — so consider yourselves warned before pressing play below.
Resonant frequencies and vibration have been explored by artists and musicians including late composer Alvin Lucier, and outside of musical realms, the sonic phenomenon has even led to bridges collapsing.
In his post, Chen also links to a video capturing engineers affecting the function of hard drives by screaming at them.
Jackson's self-produced Lifetime and A&E documentary Janet premiered earlier this year. Her most recent studio album is 2015's Unbreakable.
