I realised something the other day while Sam and I were listening to the latest in-car mix CD I've created to help further his musical education. This is hardly an earth-shattering revelation, it's something that I'm sure will be obvious to all of you, but I'd never quite thought about it in this way before...
Music depends on mood.
Specifically, our appreciation of music.
I put Sam #82 (yes, this is the 82nd CD I have made for him... I'll soon be beating Now CD numbers) on for the first time on Friday morning. I was worn out after a hectic week and in quite a grumpy mood, so my first reaction to the tracks I'd chosen was pretty negative. "You've made much better CDs before, maybe after 82 CDs you're starting to exhaust all the Sam-friendly tunes, maybe you should go back to the earlier discs where every song's a winner," etc, etc.
We did quite a lot of driving around on Friday, so by mid-day Saturday the CD had flipped back to track one. On Saturday though, I was in a much happier mood, and suddenly I found myself enjoying the same tracks I'd poured scorn on the day before. "This is a brilliant CD! What the hell was wrong with me yesterday?"
Sam's taken a particular fancy to the track below by Wax, an 80s duo made up of Graham Gouldman, formerly of 10CC, and Andrew Gold, formerly of Andrew Gold. I bought the album American English back in 1987 and played it for a couple of months... but not much since. When I first heard it again on Friday afternoon, it sounded like tinny 80s pap. By Sunday, we were both singing along to the cheesy "Woh oh oh oh oh" chorus.
Music & mood... discuss!
