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One morning at 6am Gyaltsen Moktan woke up in a panic.

It was 2019. He worked at an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet and was in charge of opening the restaurant every morning. So he set a wake-up call on his iPhone.

Then the Apple “By the Seaside” alarm sound went off. Moktan chose the upbeat, upbeat tune available as a ringtone and alarm on many of Apple’s devices, thinking the song’s calm melody would make waking up a peaceful experience.

That bet failed. “Your alarm is being mocked somehow. It’s kind of like a horror movie where they sing nursery rhymes before doom,” said Moktan, now an English teacher in Tokyo, Japan.

“By the Seaside” is perhaps Apple’s most polarizing alarm and tune, evoking comparisons to nails on a chalkboard, the word “wet” and screaming children on an airplane.

In the past, telephones had only one sound: the shrill continuous ringing of a landline. With so many ringtones available, though, sounds say more about how people express themselves — and what can cause stress and anxiety.

You probably think you don’t know “By the Seaside,” but you do. There are extended versions, rap versions, versions played on different instruments on YouTube.

“Some people think this is a great ringtone. And other people say, ‘Oh my God, that’s terrible,'” said Carlos Xavier Rodriguez, chair of music theory at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theater and Dance. of the parting melody. “You love it or you hate it.”

People have been trying to use sound to reliably wake up for centuries, relying on everything from church bells to roosters.

Until the 1970s, in some parts of Britain, some people used the services of Chukchi, or laborers who were paid to wake customers by knocking on a door or window with a stick.

The first known alarm clock in the United States was invented by clockmaker Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire in 1787, but his clock only rang once at 4 am.

In 1874, French inventor Antoine Redier patented an adjustable mechanical alarm clock. Seth Thomas patented a mechanical clock a few years later, and the electric alarm clock was invented in the late 19th century. (Its inventors probably didn’t expect the iPhone.)

Alarm clocks have evolved even more since then. Some high-tech ones these days are designed to emit light that mimics a sunrise, waking users gently with soft light and relaxing sounds like chirping birds or flute sounds.

Boston Flake, a 15-year-old high school student from Utah, says “By the Seaside” is the only alarm that can wake him up every morning for school. Far from a morning person, he has tried to create alarms himself, which are a mix of songs, blaring sirens, horns and booming basses, to no avail.

“It’s kind of a love-hate relationship,” Flake said. “Sometimes I’ll hear it in my dreams and I’ll shake a little and start freaking out.”

Apple did not respond to requests for comment.

“By the Seaside” has musical elements that make it difficult to listen to, Rodriguez says. There is no discernible key. The song doesn’t end on a downbeat, so there’s no sense of resolution when it pauses briefly before repeating.

But a bigger factor in users’ emotional responses is the “uncanny valley” element of the tune, Rodriguez says. The uncanny valley phenomenon is the unpleasant feeling people have towards real but not quite human things like robots, dolls or even clowns. “By the Seaside” has an electronic, cheesy Casio keyboard sound that’s reminiscent of computerized music eerily devoid of the human touch, Rodrigo said.

Critics of the alarm sound are vocal in their displeasure: “if your alarm is ‘beachy’, you’re a frivolous” person, says one viral X post, using a slightly spicier word than “man”. It received 160,000 likes and more than 15,000 reposts, with many users weighing in with their own thoughts. Some claim that the tune sends them into a “flight or fight” response. Others say that the tune makes their hearts skip a beat and that it fills them with dread.

So controversial is the nautical jingle that it even spawned an Internet legend. Rumors are circulating on social media that pop singer Adele wrote the tune and that it has made her more money than her entire discography combined. Ryan Meadows, the creator of Fake Showbiz News, confirmed to CNN that he started the rumor.

“We like to think [Adele would] found the joke funny. Maybe it can even inspire her to put together a suite [of] iPhone ringtones of the future!” Meadows, who uses a pseudonym, wrote in an email to CNN.

Representatives for Adele did not respond to requests for comment.

The tune certainly has its supporters. Crystal Roxas, a biopharmaceutical quality systems specialist in San Bruno, California, was waking up to the default “Radar” alarm. She switched to “By the Seaside” in 2018 after moving in with her boyfriend, who complained that her then-alarm sound made him anxious in the morning.

She has been a loyal listener ever since. “I love By the Sea. I don’t know why people hate it,” said Roxas, 34. “I actually let it play until it was over. I do a little dance in bed.

Moktan, 26, admits he believes users’ hatred of the alarm may stem from the fact that people simply hate anything that wakes them up. He once tried to set Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr.’s “Just the Two of Us” as his alarm before changing it because he started to dislike the song, he says.

“I haven’t found an alarm I like yet,” Moktan said.