Do not listen to the music in this video. You've been warned.

I remember it well. It was one of my family's first visits to Walt Disney World, before there was an Epcot or any of the other parks. There was just the Magic Kingdom. "it's a small world" was one of my father's favorites, and of course we rode it, but the ride broke down and we were stuck in the middle for over half an hour.

The music did not stop. If I'm not mistaken, after this experience, my father decided to find a different favorite.

There are reasons why this song may be the most reviled of all time. Everything about it seems to rub you the wrong way. For instance, Jason Richards writes in the Atlantic, one could point to the cheerful young singers of "It's a Small World (After All)." An online poll conducted by composer Dave Soldier in 1996 surveyed approximately 500 people about their most and least favorite musical sounds. Children's choirs were on the "hated" list, along with bagpipes, accordions, banjos, synthesizers, harps, and organs.

So we hate the singers. And the song itself? The song is a common "earworm," a piece of music that can easily get lodged in the auditory cortex, the part of the brain that retains audio information, identified by researchers at Dartmouth College in 2005...No one would argue that "It's a Small World (After All)" isn't simple or repetitive. The word "world" appears 14 times in the 22 English lines of the song. Its verses are short, and the chorus consists of one line, repeated three times, followed by a slight variation on that line.

Richards not only traces the history of the song, but takes it apart piece by piece, explaining exactly why it affects us the way it does. The article is It's an Annoying Song (After All). And yes, it may Robert B. Sherman's "most enduring accomplishment," but the man who wrote the lyrics for Mary Poppins and a million other unquestionable classics, is entitled to have written a classic of more dubious distinction.