Janet Jackson Music Unceremoniously Crashes Old Devices, Researchers Discover

Janet Jackson has topped the charts over the years and created some real hits. Like any musician, her work may not be for everyone—but computers from the mid-2000s are seemingly going the extra mile to shun the pop singer by shutting down the moment her tracks or videos are played.

One song in particular, 1989’s Rhythm Nation, is proving too much for hard drives to handle. Apparently, the track is operating at a frequency that can corrupt hard drives from the aughts. 

Detailing in a blog post, Raymond Chen says he and a colleague were out testing laptops when they noticed the Rhythm Nation music video had crashed one of the computers they were testing.

So, they tried it on other laptops from different competitors and found the same to be true.

And it wasn’t just the music video itself; the song alone was enough to cause hard drives to go crazy over the pop sensation.

On Chen’s blog, he notes that the song consists of a natural resonant that laptop models with 5400 rpm spinning hard drives also contain.

The result caused the hard drive to vibrate so hard it shut down. Chen recommends tech geeks to install an audio filter to catch the frequency before it is processed.

[via Gizmodo and Ars Technica, cover image via Janet Jackson]