Janet Jackson’s ‘Rhythm Nation’ apparently vibed too hard for some laptops

Image: A&M Records

It is normal for friends to judge our music tastes and take away our privileges, but our devices will not complain about our listening habits. According to a story shared by Microsoft principal software engineer Raymond Chen, some Windows XP-era laptops took exception to the music video for Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation" because it contained a sound that crashed their hard drives.

According to Chen, an unnamed "major computer manufacturer" discovered that some of their computers were crashing when trying to play the song and that playing the song on one laptop could cause another computer nearby to crash. The issue was found on other company laptops as well.

The company discovered that the sound of the song was similar to the sound of a laptop hard drive. It was like a less destructive version of when someone plays a specific sound to shatter a wine glass, the sound waves from the computer speakers would cause the hard drive to vibrate, crashing the computer. The manufacturer figured out a simple fix for the issue, which was to make their computers not play that particular frequencies.

The story isn't very detailed. There is no video of a laptop crashing while playing a song, and Chen doesn't say which laptops were affected. It is a fun anecdote about the weird things that physics can do to our computers and the process of figuring out what it is.

It's no secret that hard drives are vulnerable to all types of shocks. A video from 2008 shows data center engineers disrupting hard drives by screaming at them and a security researcher demonstrated a program that crashes hard drives. They helped cause suspension bridges to collapse and the Stuxnet virus tried to take advantage of them.

Thanks to the fact that they respond to sounds, hard drives can be used to eavesdrop on people. One of the examples included in a talk demonstrates the effect when you play an Iron Maiden song at a hard drive and see if a superhero can identify it. The experiment seems to have worked, though the presentation doesn't mention whether it crashed the drive.

It doesn't seem like the person who creates music using old computer parts has covered "Rhythm Nation." The irony would be wonderful, so Zadroniak should now.