Hating on DMX

For those of you who do not toil in the service industry first an explanation.

DMX is a music company that provides music feeds to stores and restaurants. Like a lot of things you can buy you can go as fancy (with specific playlists matched to day of the week or time of day) or cheap (one short playlist that plays repeatedly, over and over) as you like.

One guess which one my new employer chose.

The playlist is 3 hours and 49 minutes long. I know because I timed it. For the majority of the employees who are part time and work 4 hour shifts it's probably fine. By the time the playlist repeats they know it's almost time for them to leave. But for us full time types that means hearing each song at least twice with a few lucky threepeaters. For music loving me, who in an insult added to injury twist used to program the music at my last job myself, it's painful to say the least. It's an odd mix of oldies and 90s-I'm not sure what research demonstrated that hearing k.d. lang's "Miss Chatelaine" and the classic "Fill Me Up Buttercup" will want to make people buy pillows or reed diffusers but there you go.

But worse for me, the repetition forces intense contemplation of lyrics never meant for such scrutiny. Take Looking Glass' "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)". The sailors are saying Brandy is a fine girl and what a good wife she will be? Sailors? Really? I didn't think sailors were into the commitment so much. Is Brandy only 'fine' as opposed to "fiiine"? (i.e. the kind you marry not the kind you screw?) Is the whole song really one of those insults that only sounds like a compliment? And I gotta say the protaganist of The Commodores "Easy (Like Sunday Morning)" is really a total prick. Yeah, the music is all langourous, almost postcoital, but the guy is a total commitment phobic, love em and leave em jerk one the ladies should stay far, far away from.

You know the music's bad when you wake up with a different one of the playlist songs in your head every day. It's enough to make a music lover wish for holiday music. Or deafness.