re: #308 iossarian

power company hold music is super scratchy they sound like theyre playing it on turntable with blunt needle

Maybe it’s been this way forever, but I’ve noticed hold music that is interrupted by periodic reassurances that “your call is very important to us” has no intro, no verse, no coda. It’s always like a disembodied “middle” that stretches out forever with no tension, no resolution, no sense of musical “direction” or anything. It’s almost always really syrupy jazz-lite heavy on tenor sax, too. Almost completely atonal, which is weird.

I think the worst hold music is when they use songs that have identifiable lyrics. I can stand listening to a mercenary session guy droozling out bored sax non-melodies a lot more easily than I can put up with excruciatingly dumb lyrics sung by some singer whose voice I hate more and more with each passing second. My amateur hypothesis is that the lyrics are more ‘concrete’, and by forcibly engaging the language centers of the brain, it makes me more acutely aware that I’m being semi-voluntarily held hostage by the fact that I’m spending 30 minutes on hold in order to resolve a problem that will probably only take 5 minutes once I get an actual person (assuming all goes well).