The Most Unwanted Song
| "The Most Unwanted Song" | |
|---|---|
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| Song by Komar and Melamid and Dave Soldier | |
| from the album The People's Choice: Music | |
| Language | English |
| Released | 1997 |
| Genre |
Experimental, avant-garde, opera, polka, rap ("Unwanted") Soft rock, R&B ("Wanted") |
| Length | 21:58 |
| Label | Mulatta |
| Composer(s) | Dave Soldier |
| Lyricist(s) | Nina Mankin |
| The People's Choice: Music track listing | |
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"The Most Unwanted Song" is a novelty song created by artists Komar and Melamid and composer Dave Soldier in 1997. The song was designed to incorporate lyrical and musical elements that were annoying to most people. These elements included bagpipes, cowboy music, an opera singer rapping, and a children's choir that urged listeners to go shopping at Walmart.
The song, along with its counterpart "The Most Wanted Song" on the CD The People's Choice: Music was originally sold at the Dia's bookstore and released in 2001 by Soldier's record label, Mulatta Records.
Beginning in 1994, Russian-born American graphic artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid created a series of "most wanted" and "least wanted" paintings, based on visual aspects found to be most "wanted" and "unwanted" by people as measured in an opinion poll conducted by a professional polling company. These paintings were included in the book Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art, published in 1997.
The artists were approached by a gallery owner to make a CD for him (ultimately, the Dia Art Foundation helped to release the CD) and they approached American composer and performer Dave Soldier (a.k.a. David Sulzer, neuroscientist) with whom they were working on an opera, "Naked Revolution" for The Kitchen in New York City. Soldier suggested adapting the concept of Komar and Melamid's The People's Choice painting series, to create a musical project, titled The People's Choice: Music, which again used the opinions of the public, as measured by polling surveys, to determine which elements of the medium were 'most wanted' and 'least wanted'. The polls were written by Soldier and taken via the Dia Foundation in the spring of 1996.
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