Tuesday, April 13, 2010

From the Tech Director's Desk: Sexiness of Sound vs Sexiness of Appearance

In this new feature, WGTB board members put their heads together to mull over the sexiness of certain artists and managed to quantitatively compile the data and make serious value judgments, to be forever embedded in the depths of the Internet. Below, we present to you WGTB's Correlative Judgements on Sexuality and Expectations. Leave your thoughts in the comments-- your judgments on sexy music, artists that are deceivingly smooth sounding (the xx, I am looking at you (and wishing I wasn't)), and your ideas for future graphtastic models.
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Final conclusions from the Tech Director's Desk:

As this plot suggests, no statistically significant correlation linking attractiveness to sexiness of sound appears to exist. The sample considered during this study was extensive, spanning musical genre, country of origin and era, ranging from Phoenix – SO attractive, super sexy sounding and too trendy for their own good – to Twisted Sister and Bret Michaels (born Bret Michael Sychak, i.e. he even changed his name and it’s still not that cool) – neither sexy sounding nor even really all that attractive (though Rock of Love is pretty fantastic). Attractiveness (independent axis) is normalized to The Polyphonic Spree (with some 40+ members, there has to be a pretty Gaussian distribution of looks), sexiness of sound to John Cougar Mellencamp (really, I couldn’t decide). Interestingly, 00s Bon Jovi: slightly more attractive, a bit less sexy sounding than 80s Bon Jovi (It’s My Life has NOTHING on Always. Never has, never will.), whereas Bruce Springsteen circa 1975 (Rosie, come out tonight!) is SO much more attractive and significantly more sexy sounding than Bruce Springsteen circa 1985 (NB, Bruce of ’85 is of course still considerably attractive and indeed so sexy sounding). Any uncertainty as to the validity of the above is easily resolved by referring to any part of the Hammersmith Odeon show. T-Pain sits above average wrt sexiness of sound for his sparing and well-placed use of Autotune (and cause I’m on a Boat hits so hard in all the right places). Blink-182 is just so hot (see: What’s My Age Again music video), but alas, not all too sexy sounding. Same for Greg Brady.

Stevie Wonder is in a class all by himself.

So the results are a touch inconclusive, but satisfying nonetheless. Also, do note: the Bon Jovi pic came from coolmenshair.com. That says it all.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is freaking great

igs said...

Henry's sketches for this looked a lot like michaelangelo's sketches. also, he works for nasa. he's gonna be an astronaut.

Caroline said...

I strongly feel that Lil Wayne and Mark McGrath should swap places on the horizontal axis. Wayne is at least a little bit sexy, and Mark McGrath makes me wanna vom.

Some other interesting adds:
- Victoria Legrand of Beach House: top left
- Sam Cooke: top right
- Bob Dylan: lower left (!!)
- future husband Zach Condon of Beirut: top right quadrant

Anonymous said...

Kind of an odd choice of artists to represent... Justin Bieber?
And Bob Dylan is SO attractive and sexy-sounding, wtf Caroline?

Catherine said...

Biz Markie: Lord of Lower Left.

http://images.starpulse.com/Photos/Previews/Biz-Markie-f01.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbH3bAvTYjg

Christian said...

Where did Serge Gainsbourg go?

We can expand this so much further. I feel a little 2 am action coming in...

GT said...

i just want to second henry in saying that the girl from the xx let me down so hard. Also as long as we're all crushing on Zooey lets put her at maybe (8,5) (yeah math!) cuz while she sounds like a cutie pie on the record i think i could fall into those eyes forever.

Fiona said...

caroline, zach condon and I are ALREADY MARRIED OK

and what about joanna newsom? everyone thought she was freaky looking until she started modeling for glamour, and then this happened: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joanna-Newsoms-ASS/170454944134?ref=ts

and despite the fact that I kind of like this song it's certainly anything but sexy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHjAUhtSrk
so i'd say upper left ish YEP

Louisa said...

bob dylan's voice is so gravelly, sexy, lovely ahhhhhh!

Codie said...

totally agree with the placement of justin bieber.
as would this girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTCm8tdHkfI

also VERY offended by your placement of victoria, caroline. she's clearly top right material.

Charlotte said...

Caroline, are you kidding?? Bob Dylan goes bottom LEFT?

Try top right... discounting the recent concert i saw of him in Fairfax, VA--he didn't really have a voice at all to even try and sound sexy.

Caroline said...

no i will not take it back! do you guys understand how a graph works?? bob dylan is neither a looker nor a sexy singer except possibly on "lay lady lay" and even then... dont get me wrong, this is coming from his actual number one fan here. seriously. they gave me a trophy.

joanna newsom is a She WOOF both musically and facially

Emily said...

I agree with Caroline on Bob Dylan. undeniably an amazing musician/personal hero/truth speaker/prophet/mah boi but looks like my great uncle who no one really wants to talk to at peripheral family weddings (too specific?)
also his voice is not pretty. it is nasally and sandpapery. and the thing about sandpaper is that it can be super powerful, but i wouldn't wanna bang it. BOOM metaphors.

Christian said...

Did anyone read Dan Cook's Valentine's Day piece from his column on The Voice? It was talking about music to play during sex. I think, in a weird way, Crystal Castles were really good to play mid-coitus. Alice from that band is CRAZY hot.

At the same time, Grizzly Bear are also great to play in bed but only that one blonde member is kind of attractive (and then only if you dig the Arian twinks).

Caroline said...

HAHA so I didn't know what Grizzly Bear looks like so I googled it. In case you were wondering, this is what comes up in google images when you search for it:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=grizzly%20bear&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Fiona said...

christian your comment reminded me of this:
http://sexmusic.tumblr.com/
EXCELLENT also serge gainsbourg is right there, full circle

Sam Dinger said...

Grizzly Bear is good music for auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Unknown said...

On the topic of Bob Dylan: I just don't think it is possible to be an amazing musician and not sexy. The two go hand in hand. THAT is what's sexy.

The strain in his voice is goddamn sexy and the furthest thing from pretty. And I may as well add, pretty is definitely not sexy.