Yahoo, yahoo, yahoo.
The People's Choice: Music is an album by painters Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, and novelty musician Dave Soldier. Komar and Melamid usually had been making "The Most Wanted/Unwanted Paintings" for a while, based on what people in a certain country liked and didn't like in a painting. They were approached by Dave Soldier to translate this into music, and the result was two songs: "The Most Wanted Song" and "The Most Unwanted Song." By far, the latter is the more famous of the two, for obvious reasons.
"The Most Unwanted Song" was debuted live in 1997, while the album was released in 2001.
Tropes applying to both
- Golden Mean Fallacy: The entire project (and its preceding "Most Wanted/Unwanted Paintings" series) is meant to be a satirization of the concept, inspired by the use of polling data to dictate political consensus. The hypothetical impetus can be summarized as "If politicians use opinion polls to assess democracy and entrepreneurs use consumer polls to assess the market, why can't artists use polls to assess art?", and the end result should explain why.
- The Something Song: The Most Wanted and Unwanted, respectively.
- Technician Versus Performer: The Most Wanted Song is carefully crafted with the most popular musical tropes (at the time) in the most aurally-pleasing way possible. Meanwhile, The Most Unwanted Music is a highly experimental piece that uses the least popular musical trope, in ways that range from working in surprising unison to being an absolute mess. The general consensus is that the former is insipid and generic, while the latter is impressive and at the very least entertaining.
- Tropes Are Tools: The defining theme of these two songs, meaning that no matter how "unwanted" a trope is, it's ultimately how it's used that determines whether it works. An example is how synthesisers are used on both the Most Wanted and Unwanted songs, given that they ranked both high and low on levels of enjoyment in the surveys used. "Intellectual Stimulation" was also in both Most Wanted and Unwanted, leading to references to Ludwig Wittgenstein in both. In the former, the male singer just casually wonders if his love interest is reading Wittgenstein, but in the latter, the rapping cowgirl ham-fistedly summarizes some of the philosopher's theories.
As she fills the list of tropes... (The Most Wanted Song)
- Award-Bait Song: The song practically uses the listed cliches as a checklist.
- Munchkin: How this trope manifests in music theory, by arranging the most "wanted" musical tropes in the most effective was possible.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The results of survey suggest that most people in the time period wanted a duet between Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen. And they got them... somewhat.
- Silly Love Song: A straightforward song about love, with little depth.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: Does this near the end, just before the fade-out.
Do all your troping... at Wal-Mart! (The Most Unwanted Song)
- Artistic License – Religion: The children's chorus exuberantly urges us to celebrate Yom Kippur and Ramadan, both somber observances involving fasting and reflection, by shopping at Walmart.
- Country Rap: Sung by a soprano singer, no less!
- Christmas Songs: Combined with an advertisement for Walmart.
- Genre Mashup: Mashes up Country Music, Hip-Hop, yodeling, opera, holiday music, and experimental music.
- Gratuitous German: Part of the second Country Rap verse is in German, for some reason.
- Epic Rocking: Clocks in at over 21 minutes.
- Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: Bagpipes are featured quite a lot in this song.
- In the Style of: A few internet wags have joked that, with the numerous stylistic shifts, odd instrumentation, and ironically-deployed Americana, it sounds like something Brian Wilson might've composed for Smile.
- Jingle: A series of songs themed around Christmas, Easter, Yom Kippur, Thanksgiving, Ramadaan, Labor Day, and Veterans' Day that tell the listener to shop at Walmart.
- Kids Rock: An enthusiastic children's choir sings all the holiday songs and some other interludes.
- Sensory Abuse: Some segments are painful to listen to, especially when they incorporate bagpipes.
- Slogan-Yelling Megaphone Guy: Implied in the last few minutes with a segment that sounds like it was recorded through a megaphone that consists of a woman saying some politically charged but difficult to understand words about America.
- Spoken Word in Music: The last few minutes feature a woman speaking something about America and freedom through a distorted megaphone.
- Song Style Shift: Possibly more than any song on Earth, with a total of 23 different sections repeated over and over again.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The political megaphone speech takes place over salon music with accordion and harp.
- Stylistic Suck: It deliberately includes all the musical elements average American listeners were found to hate most.
- Unbuilt Trope: The lyrics of the Country Rap sections could be taken for a parody of "Old Town Road", except for the fact that they predate it by a couple of decades.
