I don't want to live in a world where a Kelly Clarkson fan is smarter than an Aerosmith fan.

I'm surprised that, given the fact that Beethoven seems to be at the high end of the spectrum, more individual classical composers weren't included in the study. I see "Classical" as a genre on the chart, but that encompasses a wide variety of music, not all of it created equal.

I like Counting Crows. I had no idea their fans were smart. (Or, I had no idea their fans were good at standardized tests.)

Nothing against Beethoven or Sufjan -- I have CDs of both -- but I don't listen to them regularly.

This just in: Band Geeks are Geeks.

Balrog: I don't want to live in a world where a Kelly Clarkson fan is smarter than an Aerosmith fan.


Aerosmith wiped away any awesomeness they once had with this gem (new window)

I went to a university where the freshman SAT middle IQR (50%) is (R&M):1030-1260
So I'd guess the average is about 1145+/- a few, so I like:.......

Fark. Coldplay.

Haha--I love Sufjan!! I'm sooooooooooo much smarter than all of you!! Yay!!!

I love all the dipshiats screaming racism in the comments since lil wayne, TI and all the other shiat music is at the bottom of the list.

Does the music make you dumb, or do only idiots listen to Lil Wayne?

Hollywood Cole: I love all the dipshiats screaming racism in the comments since lil wayne, TI and all the other shiat music is at the bottom of the list.

That flame war has everything! Racism, Logic v Religion, Causation v Correlation, Stereotypes... no Godwin yet.

*types*

And it's been Godwin'ed, too!

I wonder where Bad Religion fans would fall on that list...probably on the high end of rock since most BR songs are lessons in SAT vocabulary.

Techno is kind of misplaced in that thread. On one hand, you have the Daft Oakenfold fans, who are regularly chewing pills they found on the floor in some warehouse. They are lucky if they can press play on their iPod. On the other hand, you have the whole Basic Reaction fans. They can quote catalog numbers off of a record, tell you how many pressings it had and some can even sniff the record and tell you the exact amount of dye they added. They can also locate every city that has any relevant musicians from it on a map.

Tr0mBoNe: Hollywood Cole: I love all the dipshiats screaming racism in the comments since lil wayne, TI and all the other shiat music is at the bottom of the list.

That flame war has everything! Racism, Logic v Religion, Causation v Correlation, Stereotypes... no Godwin yet.

*types*

And it's been Godwin'ed, too!

No Rule 34's in there either... yet...

Ponzholio: No Rule 34's in there either... yet...

I'll just leave this here.

Doesn't really represent what i listen to (metalcore/progressive) the closest thing was Tool and it was actually pretty close to my SAT score. Lil Wayne fans can go DIAF

Tr0mBoNe: This just in: Band Geeks are Geeks.

I was a band geek and did well on the ACT, but definitely didn't listen to Beethoven (or Mozart or Bach or much other classical music... save for Copland, perhaps) in high school. If I had to guess, without relying on stereotypes at all, I'd say it's the Asian kids whose parents pay for violin and cello lessons from age 4 and who only grew up listening to the aforementioned composers.

Plus, a lot of my fellow band geeks were pretty stupid.

I'm a bit surprised by U2's high ranking. Generally speaking, it seems the bands with the "smarter" fans are the ones with smaller, possibly cult-ish followings. U2, on the other hand, are a fairly widely popular band (owing in part to the fact that they've been around 30+ years), and yet still manage to have a high rating.

I found it somewhat odd that Beethoven was all by his lonesome there up top. Article wasn't all that interesting beside Lil Wayne listeners bottoming out.

I'm not surprised Nirvana fans are smarted than Foo Fighter fans.
Muse is rightfully nice and high.

Other than Beethoven everything there is pop.

Does NO ONE listen to anything but POP?

wondering where Cynic would fall...

ZootSuitin: wondering where Cynic would fall...

From personal experience, I'd say in the Beethoven range.

NYZooMan: Other than Beethoven everything there is pop.

Does NO ONE listen to anything but POP?

Seriously, did the researcher just ignore bands they hadn't heard of? What's the sample size on this?

Nice recycling of the WSJ headline - the question mark helps, but still, it's hard to picture music and/or books making a person dumb. A dumb person choosing a book or music that is, by bell curve standards, favored by the dumb? Quite a bit more likely.

/Journalist makes dumb assumption and fact-y couple paragraphs from joke study, it spreads, profit
//Taking off-hand anecdotal humor and making it serios dum dum dum dum dum

So if we take those barely scientific results, and I compare my personal results to the spectrum, I'm smarter than the people who listen to Beethoven-and I listen to metal.
I'd wager if they did this with metal fans, they'd get a lot of outliers on both ends of the spectrum.
And I hate to generalize, but I'd imagine that a lot of people that listen to Lamb of God and Pantera would be dragging that score down on the left.
/the only Pantera fans I know are clinically brain-dead

madden101: I'm a bit surprised by U2's high ranking. Generally speaking, it seems the bands with the "smarter" fans are the ones with smaller, possibly cult-ish followings. U2, on the other hand, are a fairly widely popular band (owing in part to the fact that they've been around 30+ years), and yet still manage to have a high rating.

On a similar note, how is Coldplay so narrow? Aren't they insanely popular with kids that age nowadays? I'd expect them to stretch over at least 200 points.

Of course, there's so little information as to how this was conducted, it's worthless.

Considering my SAT score, I guess The Clash > Beethoven.

Also, Tool lost to RHCP. Fans of Tool are no longer allowed to say anything, ever.

madden101

the ACT

Move to a real state, bumpkin.

Weigard: Considering my SAT score, I guess The Clash > Beethoven.

I'd cancel you out. Perfect score, classical music fan. (Heck, I'm working toward a PhD in Musicology.)

That having been said, I don't think it's so much WHAT you listen to as HOW you listen to it. If you're a passive listener, hearing a Shostakovitch symphony is going to have no more effect on you than a Jonas Brothers song. If you're an active listener, pop music can be as stimulating as classical. It's just that active listeners will gravitate toward music where there's more to listen to, regardless of genre.

Here is a cool idea let's make musical tastes mandatory for college admissions.

I was surprised to see Jazz at the bottom. I am not a big fan, but I was always under the impression it is music for the "intellectual" type.

Batman often refers to his penis as "Lil' Wayne".

Good lord, this list is making me smug as shiat, I have to stop looking at it.

gunsmack: Does the music make you dumb, or do only idiots listen to Lil Wayne?

That's what I was thinking. I don't think the music makes you dumb, it's that dumb people listen to dumb music.

I'm an AC/DC and Frank Sinatra fan who scored a 1320, so I'm really getting a kick out of these responses.

Forty-Two: I'm surprised that, given the fact that Beethoven seems to be at the high end of the spectrum, more individual classical composers weren't included in the study. I see "Classical" as a genre on the chart, but that encompasses a wide variety of music, not all of it created equal.

And though he straddles the theoretical dotted line that separates artistic eras, he's much more of a Romantic era composer if you look at his use of complex harmony, expanded song forms, and passionate virtuosity... that shiat is wack.

Y Insayn Cloun Posse no on lisT??

Sphaux: Forty-Two: I'm surprised that, given the fact that Beethoven seems to be at the high end of the spectrum, more individual classical composers weren't included in the study. I see "Classical" as a genre on the chart, but that encompasses a wide variety of music, not all of it created equal.

And though he straddles the theoretical dotted line that separates artistic eras, he's much more of a Romantic era composer if you look at his use of complex harmony, expanded song forms, and passionate virtuosity... that shiat is wack.

There's a distinction between classical and Classical, and I doubt that the chart differentiates between the two.

Furthermore, although Beethoven's biography fits the paradigm of the "Romantic Genius," I'd be more inclined to classify a majority of his works as Classical, at least in his early and middle periods. The Eroica period works feature some experimentation with form, but it was mostly expansion of existing forms, nowhere near as inventive as the late string quartets. Harmonically, the first two periods are fairly conventional, and although the late period features a significant departure from Classical practice, they don't really foretell many Romantic tendencies, either (chromatic mediants excepted) -- late Beethoven pretty much defies classification.

Oh, it's on.

SmackLT: Y Insayn Cloun Posse no on lisT??


Because "Juggalos" are not capable of properly filling out their names.

Balrog: I don't want to live in a world where a Kelly Clarkson fan is smarter than an Aerosmith fan.

This. When I saw that Bens Folds fans did better than those of The Beatles, well... I died a little inside. Of course, TFA flat-out states that it wasn't scientific.

awfulperson: Haha--I love Sufjan!! I'm sooooooooooo much smarter than all of you!! Yay!!!

Hell, I had Wikipedia this guy. Never even heard of him.

Parrotheads are smarter than Deadheads.

/That is all.

WFern: Balrog: I don't want to live in a world where a Kelly Clarkson fan is smarter than an Aerosmith fan.

This. When I saw that Bens Folds fans did better than those of The Beatles, well... I died a little inside. Of course, TFA flat-out states that it wasn't scientific.

I think for a lot of people, saying The Beatles are your favorite band is just shorthand for "I don't really like music"

/I said "for a lot of people", not all
//No one chew my head off

Forty-Two: Sphaux: Forty-Two: I'm surprised that, given the fact that Beethoven seems to be at the high end of the spectrum, more individual classical composers weren't included in the study. I see "Classical" as a genre on the chart, but that encompasses a wide variety of music, not all of it created equal.

And though he straddles the theoretical dotted line that separates artistic eras, he's much more of a Romantic era composer if you look at his use of complex harmony, expanded song forms, and passionate virtuosity... that shiat is wack.

There's a distinction between classical and Classical, and I doubt that the chart differentiates between the two.

Furthermore, although Beethoven's biography fits the paradigm of the "Romantic Genius," I'd be more inclined to classify a majority of his works as Classical, at least in his early and middle periods. The Eroica period works feature some experimentation with form, but it was mostly expansion of existing forms, nowhere near as inventive as the late string quartets. Harmonically, the first two periods are fairly conventional, and although the late period features a significant departure from Classical practice, they don't really foretell many Romantic tendencies, either (chromatic mediants excepted) -- late Beethoven pretty much defies classification.

Oh, it's on.

It is generally agreed upon (at least in any Music History text I've read) that Beethoven is the bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods. While his later music may not be easily classified as 'Romantic' it is certainly not Classical. This lack of classification is quite normal with any art found at a major transition point.

/1430 SAT, likes Mahler, Shostakovich and Bruckner
//Late Beethoven is alright I guess
/// I needs me some tuba in my symphonies
////Tuba Player

The Slush: Seriously, did the researcher just ignore bands they hadn't heard of? What's the sample size on this?

This project has been going on for at least a year. I believe he uses Facebook -- taking the first entry on "music preference" (assuming a person answers that question first with their top music interest) and then privately polling that individual on their test score.

If your favorite band doesn't appear on the list (and look twice because the full graph is enormous) then it didn't appear enough times to be statistically significant.

And yes, the SAT goes up to 2400 now; the researcher is omitting the analysis (or whatever they call it now) score for individuals who took the SAT after the change date.

I'm trying to make sense of the chart, considering the fact that I'm an avid listener of a lot of bands on the list, spanning from jazz on the lower end of the scale to Beethoven on the upper end.

Although I suppose (as was mentioned earlier) that it's not so much what you listen to on the chart as opposed to how. People who analyze music to figure out the underlying structure of how a song's atmosphere is formed would likely be more intelligent than some airhead posting Beyonce lyrics on their Myspace page.

Would be interesting to see where a lot of bands with a cult following would fall on the list, like Pink Floyd, Rush, Umphrey's McGee, Dream Theater, etc.

1400 here and I just LOVE Built to Spill, Beenie Man, Streetlight Manifesto, Leftover Crack, Manu Chao, Geto Boys, and Michael Franti

Is this the thread where I come to brag about my high SAT score and complain bitterly about my taste in music being grossly misrepresented by the graph?

Because 1440 and Lil Wayne is the shiznit biatches. Also, I have it on good authority that he built a time machine from a tec-9 and a toaster and a blunt and some bling and it was rad. I don't care what some graph says, that's pretty damned smart!

bubbaprog: The Slush: Seriously, did the researcher just ignore bands they hadn't heard of? What's the sample size on this?

This project has been going on for at least a year. I believe he uses Facebook -- taking the first entry on "music preference" (assuming a person answers that question first with their top music interest) and then privately polling that individual on their test score.

If your favorite band doesn't appear on the list (and look twice because the full graph is enormous) then it didn't appear enough times to be statistically significant.

And yes, the SAT goes up to 2400 now; the researcher is omitting the analysis (or whatever they call it now) score for individuals who took the SAT after the change date.

The SAT scores are based on the averages of the schools, not data gathered from individuals. Then the guy found the favorite musical selections for the school. I think.

/1380, Velvet Underground, and the Stooges

some schools have terrible taste in music.

I bet Mozart's at the Li'l Wayne end.

/hate Mozart
//over 1500

1410, Metallica, Muse, Nirvana