Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid are New York-based Russian émigrés whose tongue-in-cheek approach to art has seen them hailed as postmodern geniuses and denounced as publicity-seeking pranksters. Their most famous project, The People's Choice (1994), found the duo hiring a consumer testing agency to perform market research surveys in several countries to find out what the average person's aesthetic tastes were, and then producing paintings to illustrate what each of these countries' most and least wanted paintings would look like. Both a hilarious parody of the concept of "art for the people" and a pointed critique of how thoroughly market research and polling influences daily life, The People's Choice was a controversial but successful project.

In 1996, Komar Melamid decided to explore how The People's Choice would adapt to other art forms, and with the help of musician/composer Dave Soldier (leader of the Soldier String Quartet and the avant-garde blues-rock outfit the Kropotkins), created a new poll to determine American tastes in music. After an extensive series of polls and surveys, Soldier composed, under Komar Melamid's supervision, The Most Wanted Song and The Least Wanted Song. The two compositions were then recorded and released in 1997. Soldier also co-created an unproduced opera, +Naked Revolution, with Komar Melamid in 1996. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi