The Case Against Bad Music in Public Spaces

Peter Jon Lindberg makes a strong one in Travel + Leisure:

It would be revealing to compile an alternative history of Western music, focused solely on Songs Played in Hotel Lobbies and Cruise-Ship Corridors Through the Ages. You’d document a bizarro parallel universe, one where Michael McDonald is more popular than Led Zeppelin and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons trumps everything by Mozart. The Eagles would be more revered than Dylan; Jamiroquai bigger than Springsteen. And at the top of the pyramid, with her Nagel-print cheekbones, would sit Sade.

Lindberg also hammers resorts that “pump their newage right into the pool via underwater speakers.”

I’ll come clean here: The first and only time I heard music underwater in a hotel pool—Three Little Birds, Bob Marley—I liked it. Overwhelmingly, though, I’m with Lindberg: Keep Jamiroquai to yourself, world.

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