A blandly-upbeat song from artists Komar & Melamid and composer Dave Soldier, specifically tailored to the results of a 1996 online survey of listeners' tastes. The artists claim that, according to their research, "The Most Wanted Song" will be "unavoidably and uncontrollably 'liked' by 72 ± 12% of listeners."

By contrast, they claim "fewer than 200 individuals of the world’s total population will enjoy" its companion piece, "The Most Unwanted Song".

I've heard both, and, depressingly, they're probably right.

You can read more at http://www.diacenter.org/km/musiccd.html

Actually, there's quite a lot to be said about the song: she's a waitress on the night shift in D.C. whose inner life is spent in escapism (she reads Wittgenstein and yearns to travel). He's a long-distance trucker, whose life is spent traveling, but is incredibly lonesome, which also leads to him reading...the very same book!...while dropping off a shipment in her diner. It's not spelled out, but they're both African-American.

I love the idea. R&B artists are usually chained to a fairly stereotyped version of urban life: working-class existences that have no meaning, no inner drama, nothing except the awareness that they aren't white, therefore affluent. In their shared obsession, as in Aretha Franklin's I Say a Little Prayer, (the woman singing is a secretary, which in 60's America would be a coveted job for a white woman, much less anyone else) they find a life beyond money and race, that of ideas, love, knowledge and connectedness...Really. Check this out. The instrumentation sucks, but the idea REIGNS.

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