The video for ‘Rhythm Nation’, the 1989 hit single from Janet Jackson, apparently has the capability to crash older laptops. News of the technical oddity was brought to light last week by Microsoft chief software engineer Raymond Chen, who recounted the story via his blog.
As Chen explains, the story came his way via a colleague working in Windows XP product support, who recalled how a major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the 1989 video from Janet Jackson could crash certain laptop models. Even stranger was that their investigation found that it could crash adjacent laptops – even if the affected laptop wasn’t playing the video.
Janet Jackson – ‘Rhythm Nation’
According to Chen, investigators looked into the issue, discovering that the problem was due to vibration resonance, which effectively means that increased vibrations can ultimately result in structural failure. Famously, resonance of this magnitude is behind the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the US.
“It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used,” Chen explained on his blog. “The manufacturer worked around the problem by adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback.
“Hopefully, their laptops are not still carrying this audio filter to protect against damage to a model of hard drive they are no longer using.”
Further Reading
Janet Jackson Says It’s Time To Move On From Super Bowl “Accident”
See The Star-Studded Trailer For Upcoming Janet Jackson Documentary
New Janet Jackson Documentary Looks At Super Bowl Wardrobe Incident
