Hey hey, mama, said the way you move

Gonna make you feta, gonna make you bleu

Via the Japan Times comes the story of Swiss cheesemaker (and veterinarian) Beat Wampfler, who’s conducting an experiment, with the help of the University of the Arts in Bern, to determine if exposure to sound impacts the development of cheese. Basically, he’s rocking the pants off his Emmental.

Since September, the cheeses have been blasted with sonic masterpieces from the likes of rock gods Led Zeppelin to hip-hop legends A Tribe Called Quest…. “Bacteria is responsible for the formation of the taste of cheese, with the enzymes that influence its maturity. I am convinced that humidity, temperature or nutrients are not the only things that influence taste,” Wampfler said. “Sounds, ultrasounds or music can also have physical effects.”… “At first we were skeptical,” admitted Michael Harenberg, the university’s music director. “Then we discovered there is a field called sonochemistry that looks at the influences of sound waves, the effect of sound on solid bodies.”

Wait, why would you ever be skeptical of a project that aims to determine the effect of Led Zeppelin on cheese?

I’m sorry to be the one to deliver this news yet again, but this dumb thing that’s currently amusing people online is actually dumb. Without knowing much at all about general chemistry, sonochemistry, cheesemaking, cheese aging, bacteriology or the scientific method, I feel comfortable casting serious doubt about the legitimacy of this experiment.

Even if you allow that maybe playing, like, an incredibly loud, incredibly low drone tone for a cheese’s entire maturation process might have some minor impact on how the cheese develops, how many wheels of cheese would you need to produce to control for all the variables (that I assume exist) and prove definitively that sound changes cheese? And how downright preposterous is it to expect cheese to distinguish in any way between two pieces of popular Western music governed by the same blues scales and backbeats?

Literally everyone in the world enjoys A Tribe Called Quest’s Can I Kick It?, but I’m going to go ahead and guess cheese doesn’t care because cheese does not think or feel or dance or love.

On a personal note, I want to add that I spent way, way too much time trying to come up with cheese puns on Led Zeppelin lyrics, and for a while planned to include one for every song on Led Zeppelin IV but bailed because I couldn’t come up with one for Misty Mountain Hop without using a cheese I had already included elsewhere. People don’t appreciate Weird Al Yankovic nearly enough, in my opinion. Coming up with clever cheese puns on rock songs just isn’t as easy as it initially appears.

I do offer this deep cut, though:

The prince of bries embraced the gloom and walked the provolone.