While Motörhead have a well-earned reputation as the band with “everything louder than everything else”, it appears they may not be the loudest band in the land after all. In fact, they’re not even as eardrum-shattering as pop superstar Taylor Swift.

Swift’s latest album, the much-hyped 1989, while acclaimed as a pop gem, had an absolutely shocking dynamic range. As audio expert Ian Shepherd writes on the Production Advice blog, the album has a dynamic range scoring of DR6.

Mastering engineer Shepherd ranked 21 albums by loudness, with 1989 beating out hard rock classics like Motörhead’s Ace of Spades, AC/DC’s Back In Black, and Metallica’s Black Album.

Metallica in fact topped the list, with their 2008 album Death Magnetic receiving a score of DR3, making it the loudest album on the list and arguably one of the loudest of all time. But before Metallica fans throw up those horns, know that this isn’t a good thing.

In fact, quite the opposite. When Death Magnetic was first released it received harsh criticism for its loudness, with some critics even claiming that they could hear numerous instances of clipping on the album.

It’s one of the most famous examples of what’s been dubbed “the loudness wars”, whereby recording engineers are continually pushed to make albums louder, thereby reducing their dynamic range, in an effort to stand out from the competition.

It began when juke boxes were still a major way to expose audiences to music, but nowadays the loudness wars aren’t just annoying, they’re pointless. As Shepherd points out, since radio, Spotify, and YouTube all normalise sound levels, the loudness differences aren’t audible.

The result is that albums by Nicki Minaj end up louder than releases by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, and the Sex Pistols. However, there are, quite thankfully, some artists who’ve refused to participate in the loudness wars.

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Daft Punk and Mark Ronson have both had wildly successful recent albums that feature great dynamics. D’Angelo’s universally acclaimed 2014 album Black Messiah was also a standout in a genre where things are routinely clipped and crushed.

Naturally, these are the exceptions and not the rule. For every album where you can actually hear the individual instruments, there are ten more where everything’s been turned up so loud that it’s all smashed into one big cacophonous mess.

For now, fans can at least rejoice that there are artists like U2, Pharrell, D’Angelo, Daft Punk, J.Cole, Opeth, Aphex Twin, Mark Ronson, Jack White, Paulo Nutini, and The War On Drugs who realise the pointlessness and detrimental impact of the loudness wars.

Image via Productive Advice

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