A Janet Jackson song was capable of breaking PC hard drives

Everyone has their own weakness. Achilles had the heel and Superman the kryptonite. PC hard drives in the early 2000s, for example, were resistant to everything but Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation.

The song, title track of the fourth disc of the little Jackson family, was released in 1989, produced by the historic duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. However, due to certain voice frequencies, listening on certain computers led to the destruction of PC hard drives.

The news, absurd as it may seem, comes directly from Raymond Chenan engineer for Microsoft, who explained the phenomenon.

Janet Jackson’s song that destroyed hard drives

Our story takes place at the beginning of the new millennium, when in the homes of Americans they chose whether to have a computer with an apple or one with a window. For those who opted for the latter, the reference operating system was Windows XP.

Raymond Chen says that Microsoft customer service received a series of reports regarding malfunctions and failures, which appeared – at least initially – absolutely unrelated to each other. However, it will soon be discovered that the anomalies all had two elements in common: all the broken computers were of the same brand (not disclosed which one) and had played Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation.

A swallow does not make spring, but a series of coincidences too strange to be left to chance led the engineers to investigate the case, making a shocking revelation: Janet Jackson’s voice was capable of shredding hard drives.

Below is the song “incriminata”. If you are using an early 2000s PC, press play at your own risk.

How is it possible? There is a technical explanation

Stop your conspiracy theories that Janet Jackson was hired by Steve Jobs to ruin Microsoft. Fascinating theory, really, but things are different. Actually the problem lies in an acoustic phenomenon called resonancewhich is the basic principle that allows musical instruments to play.

The problem is that Janet Jackson’s voice, in that particular audio file, is characterized by a frequency equal to the natural resonance of the hard drive. The resulting vibration thus leads to the breakage, or in any case to damage, of the hard drives in question.

It must be said that the audio mastering operations in the 80s they were certainly not intended for reproduction on 2000s machines.

The blame – if we want to talk about blame – is attributable to the manufacturers of the computers in question, which had particularly susceptible hard drives (or in any case with bad musical tastes). After discovering the problem, the manufacturer implemented a filter capable of cutting unwanted frequencies, thus preserving the hard drives.