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The Evils of Force-fed Music

Hold your ears and open your mind

4 min readJun 26, 2024

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One recent wonderful summer, my spouse and I traveled for 47 straight days through 12 cities in eight different countries. So many different sights, people, foods… and the same old force-fed music.

Most restaurants, stores, and other public places we passed through on our journey inflicted piped-in music on their customers. I would say at least 90% of the songs played were a mixture of “Classic ‘80s-90s” and the current corporate pop that is what passes these days for “dance music.”

From Italy to Lithuania the soundtrack was Anglo-American pop. There was one restaurant in Poland that played Polish music, one bar in Latvia that played hard rock, and two restaurants that played classical music. But in all the others, the force-fed music was the same channel titled “Songs from Your Childhood You Never Wanted to Hear Again.” Oh, there was one place somewhere that played “Most Repulsive Songs of the 1970s” — I forget where.

“You’ll Have the Usual”

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Douglas Giles, PhD
Douglas Giles, PhD

Written by Douglas Giles, PhD

Philosopher by trade & temperament, professor for 21 years, bringing philosophy out of its ivory tower and into everyday life. https://dgilesauthor.com/

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