Loud Music At Bars: Just Another Way To Get You Drunk

The next time you're out at a bar and find yourself cupping and screaming into your friend's ear to be heard, remember the newly revealed scientific explanation for blaring music at bars: it's all part of a nefarious plot to get you wasted.

In the latest finding from the growing field of booze sociology, researchers (who might have just been armchair drunks mining their corner dive bar for a blog post) discovered that the louder and more uptempo the music being played at a watering hole, the more alcohol barflies are likely to consume.

Those conducting the experiment claim to have stayed sober and observed the following:

"High level volume led to increase alcohol consumption and reduced the average amount of time spent by the patrons to drink their glass."

No word yet on the quality of the music (Metallica's cover of Whiskey in the Jar could understandably lead to rapid boozing, but so could, say, My Humps provoke patrons to pound whatever's left of their beverages and flee in horror).

Are bartenders playing us for fools when they crank up the music? Or are they doing it for their own sanity so they don't have to listen to our sob stories and failed attempts at humor?

On that note, a deafening soundtrack does essentially mute your pain in the ass friends. And listening to the likes of them is the leading cause of drinking oneself into a coma.