Heavy metal 'a comfort for the bright child'
Researchers found that, far from being a sign of delinquency and poor academic ability, many adolescent “metalheads” are extremely bright and often use the music to help them deal with the stresses and strains of being gifted social outsiders.
No surprise here. If critics were to actually listen to the lyrics and music they’d find the average thrash metal track was a damned sight more intelligent and political than bubble gum chart rubbish. How else do you get all the baroque musical elements in ye olden Metallica? What pop song would talk about the futility or war and the hell on the battlefield? I even know a guy that was a straight A student who ended up lead singer and guitarist in a thrash metal band - one of the smartest guys I ever knew. Compare to the average listener of chart topping garbage. There’s a surprising correlation of intelligence to musical taste. I’d venture so far as to guess there’s also a correlation on a persons variety of musical taste to their cultural tolerance and general empathy too. That would be interesting to find out.
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- Fri, 23rd Mar 2007 at 22:03 UTC
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