Some people like it (obviously, the "loudness war" would've never occurred if it didn't work commercially), some people don't. My personal example of a song wh

Some people like it (obviously, the "loudness war" would've never occurred if it didn't work commercially), some people don't. My personal example of a song where it doesn't work is Johnny Cash's "Hurt". Around 3 minutes into the song, Johnny Cash's vocal noticeably distorts. From my perspective, the distortion is absolutely a loudness war phenomenon: if you look at the waveform in an editor, the song starts off pretty "hot" given that there's a very noticeable crescendos at the end. At the end of the song, where the music is pretty much maxing out, there is no bandwidth left. There is no other option to stand out but to push Johnny's voice to distortion. I've seen people in message boards say the distortion in the vocals adds "intensity". Personally, I'd love to see an un-Loudness War version where Johnny Cash gets several dB more to cleanly sing over the music. Where dynamics, not distortion, is what is driving the intensity. For my tastes, it would be much preferred.