To Playlist, or Not to Playlist

I'm just going to say it. I HATE the playlists that have become so trendy to put on people's personal blogs. Now don't get all offended if you have one, please. I wasn't even going to write about this (though I have been contemplating it for some time,) for fear that I would offend one of my friends.

Then I checked my sister's blog and she had a poll about how people feel about these playlists. It felt so liberating to click the "Excessively Irritating" option, that I decided I'd just write what I've been aching to get off my chest ever since these things showed up.

I agree, that it's fun to see what kind of music people like. If you are my friend and you have a blog with a playlist, I have to say I have been generally pleased with your taste in music. There's a lot of good stuff out there. However, when I'm jumping around my friends' blogs or checking my email or whatever else online, enjoying the quietness of my house as Jenny naps, and suddenly I'm audio-slapped with raucous music that isn't fitting to my current mood or state of mind, I find it jarring. (I always pick my tunes based upon my mood, don't you?) I can usually get into whatever song is playing if I change my attitude of initial irritation to playfulness, but then I'm not usually on a blog long enough to hear a whole song, and I hate starting something and not finishing it.

Now, if you have a playlist on your blog, please still be my friend. I just needed to vent a bit. Please forgive me. I really do like music. I promise. I even like the over-processed-ear-candy that most people think is music.

While I was in college I studied music every day. I picked it apart. I critiqued it. I analyzed it. I studied form & part-writing. I learned to write 12 tone rows. I learned about pandiatonicism. I went through ear training. I practiced and practiced. I performed it. I went to mediocre recital after mediocre recital, listening to beautiful arias being desecrated by sub-standard singers, including myself. I learned to play (very ill, I might add) the french horn, clarinet, flute, trumpet, saxophone, recorder, snare drum, and various other instruments. I studied music history and 20th century composition techniques. I learned about throat singers in Bulgaria. I learned the difference between opera seria and opera buffa. I learned how to conduct a choir and how to manage behavior in a classroom. I wrote papers advocating for music education in public schools and analyzing Monteverdi's motets. Shall I go on?

After all of that and more, I learned to stay away from music during my personal time. Who likes to take their work home with them? For a while, just putting on a popular radio station was enough of a break for me, since it was such a different kind of music. But even then, I couldn't turn off the music critic inside my brain, and I found the simplistic harmonic progressions in pop music stultifyingly dull, not to mention the completely unmelodious melodies these songs have, or the complete lack of singing technique in the performers.

I've mostly gotten over that. I still don't play music in my car (NPR anyone?) unless you count the occasional cd of The Beatles or Baby Signing Time when Jenny is whining. Brent calls it auditory opium; it always settles her right down. Anyway, I find I can enjoy concerts and the radio again, but I still struggle with those ubiquitous playlists.

Rant over.