Between Bill and myself, we’ve got a very respectable music collection, heavy on the ecelectic. I’ve got all of mine plus maybe a third of his on my external hard drive, and stream tracks directly to our old but still very servicable stereo. I don’t work well in total silence, and usually something’s on for background noise. Since the old TV died in the summer (and the new one only gets turned on for movies, if that) It’s been the radio or the home jukebox to keep my ears occupied, and I’ve noticed something of late - I’m ignoring my rock collection. Actually, I’m ignoring almost anything that’s got a vocal track.

Granted, this leaves a wide playing field. Classical, world, folk, movie scores, plus NPR when I feel the need to be depressed by the news. Today (while sitting down for one of my “organize my music” sprees) I started wondering why I was focusing so much on music that’s either purely instrumental, or sung in a language that isn’t english, and came up with two reasons.

1.) I like to line up several hours worth of music into a playlist at the beginning of an evening and just let it run. When scrolling though my rock albums, it takes me *forever* to pick a list, because (with a few exceptions) I keep dithering over individual tracks. With the non-sung and non-english acts, I have less problem with running into a specific song that I don’t want to listen to, so I can just grab 3-4 albums, plonk them in the queue, and go about my buisness.

2.) Sung music, and specifically modern rock music, demands more of my attention than it used to. Some songs are special favorites, and I want to pay closer attention to thewm. Some songs will plunge me headlong into a bad breakup flashback, and then I’m depressed. Sometimes I want to sit down and specifically *listen to music*, but more often I need a landscape for my ears.

None of this applies when I’m driving. I have a specific list of albums that come with me in the car (now on my ipod, rather than in a shoebox full of tapes) that hasn’t changed much since the late nineties.

Oh, and for the curious, I run Winamp. No, I don’t have anything against iTunes, I just like Winamp more.