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The Forreverr Dirrty Sound    

Date of procurement: Sometime in fall 2002

Back in 2002, most mp3s sounded awful. Many of them were recorded directly from the radio or TV, so they had this muffled, crunchy quality that listeners just had to settle with. Yet even though the sound quality of mp3s has improved dramatically, some songs from this era have never shaken that classic mp3 sound, even in official studio versions. They still just sound like low-grade mp3s.

One of those songs is “Dirrty” by Christina Aguilera. Sure, the track is meant to have a sloppy, dirrty feel. But listen to it on Spotify or iTunes today. For whatever reason, it still sounds like a radio rip that was downloaded from Kazaa with a dorm room-level modem onto a low-end HP laptop that you got for high school graduation and had to take to Best Buy every other month because it got so many viruses, mostly from downloading shady versions of new Christina Aguilera singles. And that's what makes it beautiful.

This particular mp3 sounds especially terrible. It’s gloriously compressed, charmingly muffled, and sounds the same today as it did while being played in my maroon-interior ’93 GrandAm after being burned onto a CD-R. It’s a true artifact of an era’s sound quality.

Unique features:

• The audio equivalent to the “Dirrty” video’s mud pit.
• Overall god-awful sound quality.
• Extremely muffled bass, terribly scratchy treble.