Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Dag, that messed up

Um, I call bullshit.

THERE is a reason why some people gag at Barbra Streisand songs and Barry Manilow can chase teenagers out of car parks, a Sydney academic has found.

A University of NSW music psychologist Emery Schubert argues these responses are caused by a differential affect gap (DAG) - a discrepancy between the emotion expressed in a song and the emotion felt by the listener.

OK, so far so good. I can agree with this.

His research found young listeners placed a 57 per cent gap between their emotions and the emotions in Eric Carmen's 1998 schmaltz-fest I was Born to Love You, but only a 4 per cent gap between their emotions and John Butler Trio's Pickapart.

There you go! That's where the BS lies. Young listeners. Seriously, if you wanted unbiased results, you'd have to have a pretty random sampling from multiple age groups, social and racial backgrounds.

"Young people" are responsible for the success of Paris and Nicole. 'Nuff said.

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