Rockdale Council, Sydney, 2006: Manilow on loop against car-park gatherings, effective enough that by 2008 the Sydney Morning Herald reported UK councils studying the Manilow method. Classical-music dispersal was older, run for years at convenience stores and transit stations. Wellington, February 2022: Parliament's speaker looped Manilow, the Macarena, and an out-of-tune recorder cover of My Heart Will Go On at anti-mandate occupiers, the playlist reportedly drawn from a list of the world's most hated songs. James Blunt publicly offered his own catalog; the offer was accepted, and the protesters learned the words.
The folk theory of why it works: taste is tribal, and nothing clears a space like music the target cannot afford to be seen enjoying. The young flee Manilow the way earlier generations fled their parents' record collections. It is sociology performed at 90 decibels, and every council that tries it reports the same result: the crowd thins, the press arrives.
Lily Hirsch's documented critique: the method is not acoustics, it is a property claim. Broadcasting classical music or easy listening marks a space as belonging to someone else; the loiterers are not deafened, they are told, in a language no one can object to, whose sidewalk this is. The crime prevention is displacement wearing a playlist. The interesting claim underneath: the state discovered that taste polices more cheaply than officers, and that no one can file a complaint against a song.
If a song can move people like a fence, why does no one need a license to play it?