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Janet Jackson's music video for "Rhythm Nation" causes some laptops to crash

Janet Jackson performs during the final night of the Cincinnati Music Festival at Paul Brown Stadium in downtown Cincinnati
Janet Jackson performs during the final night of the Cincinnati Music Festival at Paul Brown Stadium in downtown Cincinnati
Sam Greene/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK

We knew Janet Jackson was a powerful force of nature, but none of us could have predicted just how powerful.

According to Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen, apparentlythe music video for Jackson's 1989 song "Rhythm Nation" has the power "to crash certain models of laptops."


Chen explained in a blog post that "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.

"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. And I'm sure they put a digital version of a 'Do not remove' sticker on that audio filter."

Essentially, the song has the power to crash old laptops while being played due to a natural resonant frequency from the track itself.

The news spread enough that it even reached Jackson herself!

What's scary is that hackers could crash the laptops in question, namely PCs shipped around 2005, because they could crash someone else's laptop simply by playing "Rhythm Nation!"

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