[Amanda Morrison]

Hey buddy, I've heard you sing on stage, and you're no Sinatra. You're hardly a Backstreet Boy. Don't even get me started.

Another thing I thought of, though: We as humans like having 'background noise', and I'd venture to say Americans, with our facination with technology and our somewhat decadent (by comparison to past) culture, need to have noise- television, radio, anything. Walk through any college dorm and you'll find rooms with televisions on, but nobody watching, just studying or talking instead. Background noise is a necessity for many. Perhaps we turn up the radio to hear the songs we know and love simply because our knowing and loving them differentiate them from the many we don't know?

I actually went to bed thinking about this, and got up because I worked out this theory in my mind. Hrmn. It's an interesting thought. And perhaps hearing some parts of 'background noise' - i.e. a particular song, etc. that is played a lot - helps us to learn it, and it becomes part of our list of known songs. This could also explain why people having the radio on in the background will turn it off or change it if they hear a particular opening series of chords, a certain singer, an overplayed song, etc.

I'm really going to bed this time.

/edit: okay, one last thought. Think of the Walkman revolution in the 80's and 90's - and even before them, how cool it was to carry around a boombox when you were hanging out with friends. Now think to current times, where we are smack dab in the middle of a new music revolution: XM radio (which has more specific stations for more picky people), JACK FM stations (the kind that promote 'we'll play anything' for those who have a wider variety of tastes rather than one genre), and especially the iPod (where you don't have to rely on anyone else's tastes, you can simply create your own playlist, as Koko Ed has said). Can we not walk down the street without our beloved Rolling Stones? Or do we just feel cooler walking down campus to the tune of the Hollies' Long Cool Woman? We as human beings refine our own tastes to create a movie soundtrack to our lives, of sorts. The iPod especially helps us to create automagically (what we deem as) awesome background noises, so that we don't have to skip songs or change stations.

My head hurts.