"World" Muzzak

Muzzak isn’t universally terrible, but it is generally subpar. It’s the sound quality, I think, the small buzzing that permeates throughout the song. The quiet atonal hum that distracts the mind from the melody. The worst song I’ve ever heard was a poor-quality rendition of My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion used as hold music for some company I can’t remember the name of.

The restaurant I work at has muzzak. I’ve been told it’s some radio station or streaming service that does the occasional updates to their playlist, but outside of the Christmas tunes added at the appropriate time (though I have learned there are some actual garbage covers of Carol of the Bells out there), I’ve yet to hear any song I haven’t heard a thousand times before.

Here are the songs that I like on our muzzak playlist: I Won’t Let You Down by OK Go, Cello Song by Nick Drake, and Booty Swing by Parov Stelar. And even then they’re ruined by either being mixed in with seemingly hundred of songs I dislike or, when they are all together, they’re still corrupted by poor speakers and just a little too soft to understand.

I’m not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination. I buy cheap headphones and when they inevitably break six months later, I buy them again. I just wish that these songs sounded better, or, failing that, better music altogether.

We’ve actually had this discussion before, or at least those of us who are nowhere near influential enough to change anything. We’ve talked about what songs we would add if given the chance. I’m not sure how I would answer. The restaurant presents itself as a gathering together of cultures. “Dishes from all around the world, and one from Wisconsin” adorns one wall, for example. And there is some variety in cultures in the music. Parov Stelar is Austrian, for example.

But we don’t serve Austrian dishes. We don’t play music from Wisconsin. Outside of these rare example, the only memorable songs are some variant of country or hispanic (though we do serve a few spanish dishes such as an Adobo). An entire third of our menu, the Asian dishes, are entirely missing from our track selection.

I get that muzzak is meant to play in the background. That it’s supposed to go unnoticed until it isn’t there. But there has to be something we can do to create the same environment that our food does. Little things like music, I’m sure, go a long way.

-F