When I was a teenager, my folks hated my taste in music; Janis Joplin, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, AC/DC, and Jethro Tull, with a heavy dose of Lynyrd Skynyrd just to lighten things up a bit. With the exception of Ronnie Van Zant, I believed that when it came to my life soundtrack, the darker with better. I was reasonably bright (I made money in college as a lab rat taking high-end IQ tests), but with a very bad attitude and worse school attendance record. I retreated into my music to deal with other things over which I had no control.

Turns out I’m not alone in channeling my dark energy into sound. A study out of the United Kingdom finds a correlation between music and intelligence.

From the (UK) Telegraph:

Stuart Cadwallader, a psychologist at the University of Warwick, will present the findings at the British Psychological Society conference in York today.

He said: “There is a perception of gifted and talented students as being into classical music and spending a lot of time reading. I think that is an inaccurate stereotype. There is literature that links heavy metal to poor academic performance and delinquency but we found a group that contradicts that.

“We are looking at a group with lower than average self-esteem that does not feel quite as well adjusted. They feel more stressed out and turn to heavy metal as a way of relieving that stress.

“Participants said they appreciated the complex and sometimes political themes of heavy metal music more than perhaps the average pop song. It has a tendency to worry adults a bit but I think it is just a cathartic thing. It does not indicate problems.”

So much for the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll stereotype. Personally, I’d be more concerned if my kids were listening to Celine Deon.