An American called Virgil Griffith decided to find out if music taste and intelligence were related. He wanted to know, does the music you like reflect how intelligent (or dumb) you are? Or maybe even, does your music DETERMINE your intelligence?

Griffith tested the correlation between the ten most frequent ‘favorite music’ acts of US Colleges, which he got through the network statistics page on Facebook, and the average SAT (scholastic aptitude test) scores for each college. Allowing for the fact that correlation and causation aren’t necessarily the same thing (details, details), the results are persuasive.

Nickelback fans aren’t the dumbest on the chart (more on them in a minute) but they’re definitely down in the shallow end of the gene pool, with an average SAT of 996. For comparison, Radiohead fans have an SAT of about 1200, while the smartest students hit about 1400.

Griffith has effectively issued a health warning here. See, Nickelback songs are to music what Big Macs are to food: junk. They’re dressed up misleadingly as ‘music’, they’re all virtually identical, they slip down easily – no chewing required - and the best you can say about them is they fill a gap. (And like MacDonalds they’re everywhere, damn it). Just as eating at MacDonalds too often will probably lead to malnutrition, listening to too much Nickelback means one day you wake up to find you can’t remember how to tie your shoelaces.

You probably lose an IQ point for every half-hour of listening time.

Radiohead, on the other hand, while not always pretty, and frequently challenging, is giving you your vitamins, to stick with the food analogy. It’s gourmet Thai to Nickelback’s McFeast. Because the best music doesn’t just fill a gap, it grabs you by the balls and makes you FEEL something. It makes your eyes water (that’s the chillies) and reminds you that you’re alive.

And as we now know, it also makes you smarter.

So whose fans are the dumbest? Among those who need help getting dressed in the morning are people who like Lil Wayne (the dumbest at 880), Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Justin Timberlake. No surprises there.

At the smarter end of the spectrum are the fans of Radiohead, Ben Folds, U2, Bob Dylan, Counting Crows and Sufjan Stevens. Again, this sounds about right, although there are some anomalies. Norah Jones might be the daughter of an Indian sitar virtuoso (Ravi Shankir), but I’m sorry, easy listening does NOT lift your IQ.

Some of the comparisons are interesting, if a tad obvious: Pink Floyd fans are smarter than Chemical Romance fans (1116 vs 1020); Led Zeppelin trumps Bon Jovi (1150 vs 1030); Jimi Hendrix beats The Doors (1110 vs 1050); and Pearl Jam is somewhere in the middle (1060).

Griffith found that the very smartest college students, with SAT scores up around 1400, listen to Beethoven. I’ve done some googling and apparently he’s a dead German composer who made a comeback in the disco era with something called A fifth of Beethoven. My theory here is that kids from the born-to-rule set, who have to spend the first 25 years of their lives doing nothing but studying, are simply not allowed by their parents to listen to rock’n’roll for fear it will make them take drugs and have sex with the wrong people. Sociologists call it ‘social reproduction’, or something.

It’s sad. If allowed by their parents, the most brilliant students would undoubtedly listen to all my favourite artists.

I hope you’re picking up on the gravity of the message here: the music a person likes is not just an interesting (or not) crotchet of taste, it tells you crucial things about them.

For example, if the only thing I told you about a man was that his favourite band was AC/DC, you’d immediately guess a few other things about him. He’s probably got, or once had, a mullet, owns a lot of black T-shirts, struggles with personal hygiene and lives in Charnwood. And you KNOW he drinks too much.

See what I mean?

Let’s try another one. All you know about a person is that they LOVE Barbara Streisand. Easy: they’re either a middle-aged woman who completely bypassed rock’n’roll, or a gay man. All sorts of other things follow from those starting points.

So knowing someone’s music taste is important, and it’s especially important when you’re looking for a partner. Yet people don’t take the time to find this stuff out, often with tragic consequences. I know a man, a good friend, who discovered too late that his wife was a big fan of Peter Allen, for God’s sake.

You may laugh, but this is serious. Because not only does this guy have to listen to Peter Allen, he also has to pretend the music actually has some merit (“Sure darling, I guess I go to Rio is sort of … um … I can see why people might like it”).

Worst of all, a Peter Allen fan will not let you listen to Jimi Hendrix up loud while you wash the dishes (“PLEASE turn off that horrible music!”)

So finding out a woman’s taste in music is every bit as important as finding out her politics, her religion, and whether she’s any good in the sack. You need to do your homework, people.

Say you’re keen on a particular woman, and things seem to be going well. She isn’t a psycho (bonus!). She’s employed, and she actually seems to like you. Good so far, but before you cross a line into any kind of commitment – before her toothbrush appears in your bathroom – you need to have a careful look through her CD collection.

So while she’s making you a coffee at her place, you flick through her CDs. To your horror, you find not one but both James Blunt albums.

It’s like an ice-cold shower.

Ok, steady yourself and take a deep breath. Try not to run. Don’t be too hasty, because we’ve all made mistakes, right? I once bought Supertramp’s Breakfast in America because Rolling Stone magazine said I should, and it was rubbish. I really tried to like it, but I couldn’t find a way into the dinky music or that horrible cloying voice (‘There are tiiiiiimes/ when all the world’s asleep’ - shut UP).

The point is, it was in my collection for ages before I chucked it out.

At school I knew a guy, an alpha male type, who bought the first Culture Club single, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. “Hey, you should hear this chick,” he told me, “she’s great”. Needless to say, he soon figured out the truth about ‘this chick’. The single disappeared from his collection and it was never spoken of again.

So you should give her the benefit of the doubt. Trying to keep your voice calm, you casually say, “Hey, I notice you’ve got a couple of James Blunt CDs. Are they … yours?”

She smiles.

“Oh yeah [Please tell me it was just a phase]. I think he’s great [Uh-oh]. Actually, I went to see him when he came to Australia [Oh God] and you know what, he made me cry [Noooooo].”

This is the point where you suddenly have to mention that your flatmate worries when you stay out late. NOW you should run.

“And by the way, don’t ever try to contact me again”.

A little effort, you see, can save you from a lifetime of misery. This public service announcement is long overdue. It’s all part of the service, folks.