Joe Rogan sat down with Chris Williamson for episode #2544 of The Joe Rogan Experience, and amid a sprawling conversation, the two landed on an unexpectedly memorable tangent: the intelligence quotient required to appreciate different genres of music.
The topic emerged while discussing Rory McDonald’s old UFC walkout music mix-up, which spiraled into a comparison between Nickelback’s “Rockstar” and Cypress Hill’s song of the same theme.
Williamson pointed out that the two songs share nearly identical structure and subject matter, prompting Rogan to defend Cypress Hill as the superior version. That led Williamson to needle Rogan, saying Nickelback isn’t “the Stones” and definitely isn’t “Pink Floyd.”
Rogan ran with it.
“It’s white people music,” Williamson said of Nickelback.
“It’s 98 IQ max.” Rogan said. He clarified he wasn’t dismissing the genre entirely, joking that it’s a majority of the population. “That’s a good percentage of the population.”
When Williamson asked what would qualify as high IQ music, Rogan replied, “Pink Floyd for sure.”
He didn’t stop there, expanding his impromptu ranking to include jazz, though he noted the caveat that “a lot of brilliant people love jazz” while also knowing “a couple dumb people” who are fans too.
Tool also made his list of high IQ music. As for heavier genres, Rogan floated that metal fans are probably “a little mad at your parents.”
He said, “Tool’s very high IQ music. If if you’re into like metal, probably a little disturbed. You’re a little mad at your parents. ”
Williamson pushed back on the idea, noting that if the discussion was really about intellectually sophisticated music, something more refined like Beethoven might be a better example.
He stated, “But I don’t know what’s high IQ music in that way. Like that’s popular as well. But I was trying to think about what that would be if it Beethoven, something more refined.”
Rogan, however, took the conversation in a different direction, saying he was most fascinated by music created before the advent of recording technology.
He noted, “To me, the most fascinating music is music when there was no recordings. I am fascinated by the fact that these people wrote down music on paper so that other people could replicate it and that’s how they passed on these amazing songs that people still play in concerts today. There was no ability to record.”
