Do you listen to music during work hours? For many workplaces, having the radio on in the background is just another subtle way of fostering a relaxed yet focused atmosphere during the daily grind. For other workplaces though, the only sound that should emanate from your desk is the sound of toil; it should be all blood, sweat, and the occasional tear for good measure.
Whether it's the torturous sound of commercial radio playing its A list for the fifth time that day, or the comfort and unpredictability of a random playlist on your I-Pod, music in the workplace can both unite and divide. It can bond employees together through shared tastes ... "Greta, I had no idea you loved Wham! Let's do lunch and swap stories of our groupie days!" ... or can divide equally ... "Frank you gronk, Wagner's Overture in C major is far superior than his Symphony in C major. I thought everyone knew that!"
What is interesting is the number of songs written with particular days of the week in mind. It's perhaps not surprising that Mondays and, to a lesser extent, Sundays, get a really, really bad wrap.
Whether it's the Boomtown Rats' 'I Don't Like Mondays', The Bangles 'Manic Monday', Fats Domino's 'Blue Monday', the Carpenters' 'Rainy Days And Mondays' or Dolly Parton's seminal 'Nine to Five', it seems we're easily talked into the Monday blues and commercial radio stations seem to take some sadistic pleasure in subjecting us to the above songs on Monday mornings.
To be fair though, Fridays are a different story and many stations who take this perverse delight in reminding us it's Monday do in turn like to remind us when the weekend is upon us, on the off chance it slips our minds. So The Cure's 'Friday, I'm in Love', the Easybeats' 'Friday On My Mind' and Loverboy's 'Friday Night' are all essential fodder for Fridays.
What about mid-week though? Sunday/Monday and Friday/Saturday - the respective agony and ecstasy of the week - get regular lyrical love, but Tuesday to Thursday don't get much of a look in. So where am I going with this? I'm not quite sure myself, but I guess you can learn a lot from people's musical tastes and it's always a good conversation starter. As they say, music is the 'universal language'.
Whether it's rock'n'roll, country and western, banging Chicago house, smooth jazz, top 40, dubstep, dancehall or R&B, we all have our favourites we're happy to admit to, and some we'd rather keep to ourselves (I've always been a big fan of Chris De Burgh's 'Lady In Red', for example; no judgement please).
What music do you listen to at work, and what gets you in the spirit for the daily slog? Do you sit next to Sheena Easton's beau on the morning train on a weepy Wednesday, or do you jump out of bed each morning to the sounds of a good old-fashioned power ballad (Poison's 'Every Rose Has it's Thorn' perhaps?), swinging a lighter in the air as you board your bus?
On second thoughts, shouldn't we all be working right now instead of fluffing about on blogs? In the words of Roy Orbison, 'We got a lot of lot of lot of lot of work to do'!
Image courtesy of: cokeeorg
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