Toxic Experiment

On Thursday, my afternoon was all going to be computer work, so I decided to conduct an experiment. This is the journal I kept.

From the hours of 1 to 5, today, (barring any meetings that pull me away from my desk) I will be listening to Toxic on repeat. This will be 71 listenings. I will be journaling my thoughts.

1 listen: Toxic is a pretty OK song. Quite catchy, if a little over produced.
2: I wonder if those strings are real or synth? They don't sound quite right.
3: is that accoustic guitar in the opening? I never noticed that before, wow it's through the whole song!
4: Wow, through most of the heavily distorted vocals, an almost completely unmodified vocal mirror is audible faintly in the right earphone. It almost sounds like a real singer.
7: There's at least three different filter sets they apply to her vocals. That is, if they didn't have her re-track backup vocals/harmonies, and did it all digital. In at least three places it is obvious she did her own backup, as her vocal inflection and timing are different.
16: In the intro, very quietly there is some pseudo-far east sounding string instrument. Interesting. This song has a lot of layers.
17: The reverb/echo on 'spin me all around (round,roundround) seems really cheap compared to the rest of the vocal effects.

After one hour: I am fidgity. My body relaxes slightly in the brief pause when the track loops, and then tenses up again when the intro beat hits me with like a jolt.

20: Her pronunciation is starting to grate on me.
22: So i just tried to have a conversation with someone who had wandered by my cubicle, with only one of my two earphones moved, so i was still getting toxic piped in on one side...it almost broke my head.
31: I can still write, and I just tried to have another conversation. I realized the problem is that I am now subconsciously singing along with every loop, and expecting every beat, so forcing my brain to process other input (someone talking) and create words is difficult.

HALF TIME ANALYSIS:
The element of the song that is still annoying me most heavily right now is her inconsistent pronunciation. A lot of "ya" and "yer" instead of "you" and "your"...but not 100%. Somehow, having her say "you" and "your" makes it more obvious when she's fudging her pronunciation every other time.I'm starting to feel slightly nauseous. This may or may not be related to the song, I did have a small slice of Costco pizza and a cheese sandwich for lunch. At this point, for the first time, I really want to stop listening. Going to push through it! (You're toxic, I'm slippin' under...)

Also, there are still a couple points in the song where my verbal sing-along degrades into sounds instead of words, as I can't for the life of me pick any meaning out of what she's saying. I just concentrated for a loop and figured out one. "Ahgadayu" is probably "A guy like you [should wear a warning]" even though there isn't even a hint of the k or l. I now hear the 'correct' lyric each time instead of just the jumble of sounds it was before, to the point where I have tricked myself into hearing a hint of the 'k' in like.

I'm starting to get a little bit of a tension headache. I'm mentally fatiguing. The song is slowly being split into its component parts, and almost getting checked off as it goes through the song. "whiney strings, check, james bond-y electric guitar riff, check, 'bow wow' distortion synth, check"

Most of the mental fatigue is probably a result of the fact that it is such a stacatto song that it repeatedly demands priority from my nervous system. I can usually be doing something and thinking about something else. (daydreaming while modifying a cad model, or thinking about the rest of the email I'm in the process of writing) but having toxic blaring has reduced my brain to a single track. I can do and think exactly one thing, as all multi-tasking capability is being taken up by Toxic.

41: A new development. Every 's' and 't' sound now feels like little pinpricks into my brain, and she has a lot more 't' in her 'd' sounds than normal people do."Too high can' come Town" "I'm atticktet to you" etc

61: Since she's obviously not doing this live or continuously, it's very odd to see where where the mixer choose to insert breaths. Sometimes she'll start her phrases with a breath intake, sometimes she'll have a breath between phrases, but more often not. They're probably only there 20% of the time.

65: there's a ding in there that makes me think I have a new instant message, it's gotten me the last four playthroughs.

70: 1 more repetition! After what I calculate to be 70 repetitions, only having the one left is a delight. For the last three, I've had a strong desire to curl into the fetal position under my desk.

I am done! Woohoo!
Results: I am slightly disoriented, really have to pee, my fan is loud and so are my computer keypresses, and I don't have the song in my head, yet. I'll report back at end of day and let you know if i find myself humming it.

Further Results (8pm): I missed my freeway interchange driving home from work and didn't realize it for 5 miles. I've never done this. I'd say 4 hours of Toxic messes me up worse than missing two nights of sleep in a row...I still don't feel quite right.