Janet Jackson’s ‘Rhythm Nation’ video used to break old laptops, says Microsoft

That’s one way to reduce your screen time.

A strange fluke in Janet Jackson’s ‘Rhythm Nation’ video used to break certain Microsoft computers, a blogpost from the company’s principal software engineer, Raymond Chen, has revealed.

The issue — which occurred whether the laptop was playing the video or not — came from the song’s frequency, which was too close to the natural resonant frequency of laptops with a 5400 rpm hard drive.

The problem was quickly fixed when the manufacturer added a custom filter to detect and remove the frequency during audio playback.

Microsoft is quick to note that the crash was certainly “not an artistic judgement.”

Despite this unfortunate issue, Jackson’s album was a hit, spending four consecutive weeks at the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart.