The Importance of Listening to Background Music

There’s something about being a musician that makes it impossible to resist analyzing whatever music you might be hearing at a given moment, whether it’s a live performance of a well-known symphony or an annoying jingle issuing from the ceiling speakers of a hotel elevator. Usually, these instinctive “analyzations” tend to result in little intellectual satisfaction (especially in the case of the elevator music) but this past winter break, I had such an experience that turned out to yield some surprisingly intriguing cultural insights. Even more bizarrely, it occurred in a place where I would have least suspected inspiration to strike: Aeropostale.
 
For those who may be unfamiliar, Aeropostale is a popular clothing retail chain that typically attracts an adolescent crowd, most of whom bring along their significant others whilst browsing racks of artfully torn jeans and stylish hoodies. It’s not a store that I frequent regularly (I’m more of a Kohls person myself), but my younger brothers and I had received some Aeropostale gift cards for Christmas, so we decided to brave the swarm of post-holiday shoppers and make the trip out to the trendy retailer on a blustery January afternoon just a few days after New Year’s. Upon arriving at the store, I was immediately struck by its blatantly hip atmosphere; a polished blond-wood floor gleamed under the rows of elegant spotlights that lined the ceiling, pairs of fashionably faded jeans lay casually on curvy wooden tables, and faceless manikins stood silently on glittering metal podiums, exemplifying the epitome of cool. But for me, the most alluring aspect of Aeropostale’s attractive atmosphere was the blaring music issuing incessantly from its ceiling speakers, filling the air around me like a sonorous hailstorm. I’m not entirely certain what type of music it actually was, but I can relate that it involved a lot of very loud pounding interspersed with an electric guitar playing in such a high register that I feared for the stability of the store’s windows.
 
Perhaps it was because it was such a different type of music than the kind I normally listen to, but I couldn’t help but ask myself why the store managers had decided to put on such an aurally disturbing soundtrack. Even a I-vi-VI-V-I elevator ditty would have been preferable to this! But then I started to think: maybe this was, in fact, the right music to be playing at Aeropostale, because it effectively complemented the type of environment that the store was attempting to emulate. The more I listened to it, the more it reminded me of the type of music one was likely to hear at other “hip” places, like a club or a trendy restaurant. Other types of music just wouldn’t work–country music, for instance, would imply a completely different vibe, and classical would most certainly be out of the question. Imagine walking into an Aeropostale or a similarly trendy retailer like Hollister and being greeted with the brooding strains of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. Doesn’t quite jive with the faded jeans and low-cut tops, now does it? Or even worse, imagine walking in–perhaps accompanied by some adolescent acquaintances–and being treated to the harsh dissonances of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra. Now, that would be terrible for business.
 
While these imagined scenarios are amusing to contemplate, it’s a very real fact that background music plays a vital role in creating the atmosphere of a given place, and ultimately influences our subsequent perception of it. Lighthearted and pleasant music will make us feel at ease, while the ear-splitting variety I endured at Aeropostale might cause us to feel almost intimidated, especially if it’s not a type of music we listen to regularly. As musicians, we must be especially conscientious of this effect, because it reveals to us the extraordinary potential we have to foster change and exert influence–not just on the place or setting that we might be performing in, but on the people who are attracted to that place, and the activities they will be engaged in there. It is perhaps more demonstrative than anything else of the need for us to take our music out of the concert hall and into the communities around us, so that we might alter atmospheres in a way that breeds positivity, hope, and peace.
 
So the next time you find yourself at the mall, in a restaurant, or even just paying at the gas station, listen more attentively to the music that you hear around you. What does it say about the place that you are in? Or more significantly, what that place is trying to say?