I like my job. I like the people I work with. No problems there.
The problem comes from their taste in music. They play one of three radio stations. The one playing when I interviewed was a painfully-hip “adult alternative” station. Despite tendencies toward preciousness, they play a nice mix from a large playlist, there are not too many commercials, and the DJs are quiet. Since I sit under a speaker this would seem the best of all likely choices and I could stand working here.
Then somebody tuned in a testosterone-charged “light metal” station aimed at twenty- and thirty-somethings still living with their parents. Loads of Rush, Cheap Trick, and Van Halen. I never thought I could get sick of Led Zeppelin, but that was before I could set my watch by when one of their songs would be played. The disk jockeys are loud and artificially enthusiastic and they play the same commercials over and over. A station speciality is “Two-fer Tuesday,” when they play two songs by every artist. What’s worse than one song by Foreigner is two songs by Foreigner.
Things went into the toilet when the bosses went out of town and somebody tuned in the only “country” station in town. Please don’t get me wrong. I have always enjoyed old hillbilly, bluegrass, and commercial country-western music of the fifties and sixties. But I agree with Boxcar Willie that C/W hit the skids when Olivia Newton-John won a CMA award in the seventies, followed by the Barbara Mandrell-ization of the industry as it grew more insipid. What passes for country now is the blandest pop sung through the nose. It suffers more than ever from songs written around catchy taglines or strings of cliches. Daddy, death, and dalliances are still major topics, but those strings were pulled loose a long time ago. Like in pop music, singers are known as much for their looks as for their talents.
The only song I enjoyed all day was by Juice Newton. Juice Newton, fer crissakes. That’s a bad sign.
Now that I have insulted fans of current country music, I wonder if I could ask the same people for help. Every form of music has something appealing about it. What should I listen for in country that could increase my appreciation and make being force-fed it a little more tolerable?
Oh god, they just turned on “The Eighties Channel.” Please, shoot me now.
A friend of mine has a great theory about country music.
I was commenting on how many of the female country singers who are really popular, seem to be considered physically attractive (ie Shania Twain).
He said, “Of course! Any old retard can sing country music, so the only way to be successfull at it is to be really hot and sexy, that will put you above the others.”
Makes sense!
So my advice is to lobby for a TV to watch while you work. You’ll still have to listen to their cheesy and insipid whining, but at least you’ll get to watch their scantily clad gyrating bodies while you do.
I don’t have any advice on how to enjoy music you hate but I’ll send you a hug and a shotgun to blast the friggin’ speakers with!;){{{{{{{{{{Drop}}}}}}}}}
Brunnetter, great idea, but distracting and too many of the singers are guys. The only part of Alan Jackson I want revealed is his degree of baldness under that hat.
Now, I’m with you on the hair/metal band thing. Not my cup o’tea. I’m right there next to you on the picketline against country. But I will not stand by and listen to 80s music dissed. No, sir, Sharona shall stand tall, and that skank Jenny shall remain at her number. Sure as my name is Swiddles.
Re: OP. I dunno, country-pop might sound better if you stuff your ears with cotton. My coworker listens to top 40, which I sneak into her office and turn down whenever she goes to the bathroom. Heh.
OldScratch, the earplug idea has merit. Earphones are great if you don’t want to be interrupted. They don’t even need to be plugged in! But I appreciate some outside noise to drown out the voices in my head.
Swiddles, I like a lot of eighties music. I’m even tempted by some of the CDs advertised on TV. But this station has no discretion. If it’s from the eighties it gets played, no matter its quality. And they sneak in stuff from the seventies and nineties. Which makes it just another oldies station.
I keep a radio on my desk and when I really need to get some work done (cough cough) or just drown out the rest of the office, I plug in the ear-mites and listen to whatever strikes me at the moment. Since the radio has buttons for presets, I don’t even have to waste a lot of time spinning the dial.
I think your only choice is to come to work drunk. That is the only way I can take large doses of country music. Hope you don’t operate any heavy machinery.
This can be a problem where I work as well. I work with a preponderance of 20-something men. I am a 30-something woman and our tastes do not have a very wide overlap. We try to be considerate of each other. I try really hard not to be a bitch about what they play, but I will occasionally ask them (very politely) to change a radio station or cd. If they won’t play country or anything with “metal” in the title or category, I won’t play my classical/orchestral/choral music.
I have my own radio at work. I have the decency to keep it at quite low volume, and here I am the only one who has one. In situations such as you describe, I used earphones.
The station I listen to? They describe themselves as “music from the 80’s, 90’s and 70’s.” So I guess I can’t help you there .
You could always try to sing along real loud in a horrible voice and threaten to continue to do so until they either change the station to something you prefer or shut it off…
I’ve never had to do this. sorry man. I don’t even get to listen to music at work.
It’s kind of supprising that they have music playing that everyone can hear. USually in any sort of group there isn’t one sort of music that everyone will like. Here at work we all just plug earphones into the computers and listen to whatever MP3’s we happen to have on our machines… or there’s that one machine that has nothing but thousands of songs that you can plug into as well… I suggest just grabbing a good pair of headphones and using them to play your own stuff, and drown out everyone elses!
My wife loves country. She even re-programmed the radio buttons in my car a couple of times when she drove my car cuz hers was in the shop.
She also has my 3-year-old son, Morgan, listening to it. Whenever “Two Pina Coladas” comes on, he thinks it’s “his song” because of the line “Let’s set sail with Captain Morgan …”. He also tells me to turn off the radio if it’s not the Dixie Chicks.
But, that would all be tolerable if not for the fact that THAT CRAZY WOMAN KEEPS SINGING ALONG TO THE RADIO!!! AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!
Well, you can enjoy the puns and stuff which are rampant in C & W but they’re not subtle so that gets old.
You could play “Music Video Director” in your mind as you listen… How many cliches can we squeeze into THIS one? “Okay, now we go for the sweeping camera shot that zooms up, up, up away from the pickup truck, across the field of Kansas wheat…and then let’s see, we could cut to a bar scene here…yeah, just where the steel guitar starts twanging, that’s when we could have the bad cowboy (in black leather chaps) shove back his barstool and stalk over to the pool table…”
Very true. I’ve seen the same scenario play out at many different jobs. There’s always one person who likes reggae, while everyone else despises it, one person who likes country, ditto, and I’m usually the only one who likes jazz.
Although I don’t lobby too hard to get a jazz station, unless there’s a specific program I know is on, because there’s jazz and then there’s jazz, and when that wimpy white-boy turtleneck sweater stuff comes on, I’m not willing to defend it.
Classical is good because each piece lasts so long, and the commercials are unobtrusive, but again, you can’t predict when chamber music is going to come on.
The consensus usually falls to modern or classic rock, but there are also clashes between people who do and don’t like club music (I can deal with it, although I’d rather be…clubbing! if I’m going to listen to that) or makeout music (I abhor it).
And then there are the inevitable clashes between people, such as me, who like rap, and those age-of-Aquarius mofos who claim that they personally ended the Vietnam war by marching, even if the extent of their commitment was embroidering a peace sign on their jeans, and who refuse to accept the fact that rap is the protest music of now. I like stuff from their era, but they are utterly blind to the fact that they are now just as closeminded as their parents. I’d like to tie them up and make them listen to nonstop Laurence Welk.
And that brings me to my current situation. My cubemate plays an easy-listening station, all day. They play Sometimes When We Touch every day. I’d like to touch the guy who sings that song, and whoever wrote it if they’re not the same person. With a cricket bat. For as long as it takes.
We have an easy-listening station that advertises itself as “the one station everyone in the office can agree upon.” Which is true. I worked one place where everybody, young, old, white, black, whatever, agreed that it was more annoying than not having music at all.
I miss Muzak. Not just any assemblage of overwrought instrumentals, but the scientifically designed, mood-altering, manipulative, REAL Muzak. You thought you were ignoring it but it wasn’t ignoring you!
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