The music in your life from outside sources

[The Curmudgeon]

It's fair to say, at least in my life, that the music that I hear (note: not necessarily listen to, big difference), at least half of it is through other people. Music playing in shops, Mrs C's decent but occasionally terrible selection in the car and from people at work. So let's have a chat about what THAT music is like.

So, my wife first of all. We spend a lot of time in the car together, and whenever she's playing her music it's usually a shuffle of what's on her phone. She's got a varied taste, does Mrs C. Her favourite band is the Arctic Monkeys, so I hear a lot of them, and they're decent. There's a batch of bands we both like (REM, Prodigy, Stones, Manics, Bowie, Lou Reed), decent bands I don't like but can tolerate (Killers, Kasabian), a lot of pop stuff we usually both like and a lot, a fucking LOT, of dance music, most of it I don't like at all (oh yay, another 9 minute fucking Deadmau5 instrumental, crank that shit UP).

Work is a constant grind, musically. It used to be so much better; my old boss plays in a band and has a genuine love for music. He also has Spotify Premium which he lets anyone use, and would always give preference to people playing "real" music (he would often use the app on his phone to just kill any chart shit he didn't like that someone was playing). Usual popular suspects would be Arcade Fire, Stones, Radiohead, Blur..but pretty much anything good or "real" got the OK. That was a good environment.

Now? I got changed teams, so it's now a bit of a mix of who plays music. More often than not it's dreadful, fucking dreadful chart and dance stuff. I must have heard those new Justin Bieber songs about a thousand fucking times. Then there's just pointless, thumping, go nowhere dance music. The girl who sits next to me usually plays her own stuff and she has, literally, the worst music taste I have ever encountered. At first you think she's being sort of ironic, but it's a straight-faced love of absolute SHIT that no-one ever wants to hear. "Get the Party Started" by Pink? Yep, that still gets played by at least one person on earth in 2016.

So more often than not when the working day is done I'm retreating from that place and into the sanctuary of my own earphones and my own God-tier taste in music.


That's usually what my outside source of music is like. How about you?

[lemex]

At work I'm often putting on the top 40 for my students to help them work and focus, and it drives me nuts. I can't help but notice, though, that the boys all want Justin Beiber these days, while they all hate 1 Direction, and vice versa - girls hate Beiber, love 1D. Sometimes there will be a kid who asks me to put something actually good on, like 'Johnny B Goode' but that's rare and far between. They are often quickly my favourite people in the class too as a result of that. I hate, hate hate hate that music.

I'm often in one shop alot, for long periods of time. Basically because I really fancy the pants off a girl who works there. And they play a lot of this Eliza Doolittle sort of easy-listening melodic stuff. I never know what the music actually is, and I'm kind of in this weird sort of split between loving it and hating it. I've sort of grown a relationship with the sort of music they play I guess, and I just know if I heard one of those songs in any other situation it would just be too weird for me.

I've got a friend who is really into Christian rock, and whenever I'm in his far I'm often listening to bands like Flyleaf and Icon for Hire. To be honest, I like bands like that now. But I hate the fact I like it.

In my own car I've always got it tuned to the classical station. I don't know why, but I can't be bothered to change the station yet - so I've been listening to A LOT of classical music by default. :-3

That's my vicarious listening. :-3

[trashcanman]

Right now I'm in my own musical world. For the last year and some change I work in a room all alone so I listen to whatever I want and nobody is there to complain. It's NICE. My wife is basic as fuck. She listens to the Pandora station for Fun and goddamn nothing else so it's "Carry On" five times a day with Imagine Dragons and Mumford and Sons every other song or so. Not terrible music, but boring as fuck when that's all you're hearing.

[Quillford]

See I often listen to my own music, MOST of the time. But as I work in a contact center they assume it will be a good idea to waylay our fears of angry customers with Heart Radio TV... This is for all people not in the know a "Pop Music Channel". So the past three weeks have been dire... Everytime I sit down I hear not one, not two, but three different Justin Beiber songs as they have been in the charts. So I am enthralled by that. If it wasn't enough it follows on with Nicki Minaj and some motivational plonk such as "like an explosion" or "what about now" or something Taylor Swift vomitted up.
My lady has a soft spot for The Vamps so again I feel blessed by this when the radio catches them on. To break this banal mainstream tosh I am off to see the Voodoo Glow Skulls tonight and Royal Republic (who are supporting Theory of a Deadman) in a couple of weeks. Yey.