Every day, when we start working in the stalls, the radio is turned on. For two weeks, we had been working to Sonic, a station playing the really mainstream popular music, like Rihanna and Nicki Minaj and all those fake house-light hip hop-predictable electronic beats stuff.
And honestly, I think they had a playlist that they played every day, only changing the order a little to not make it too obvious. They played the same songs over and over and I didn’t even like them the first time I heard them.By the second week, I just wanted to scream when Nicki Minaj started singing “Starships were meant to fly” or Sia “Hey, I heard you like the wild ones” and then Flo Rida continued with his rap. How songwriters and composers and producers and artists can make such incredible amounts of money by making people believe they like those uninspired melodies and bad lyrics, I don’t know. The music industry of today must be the biggest sham in existance.
Eventually, I had had enough. On Friday I was the last one working in the stable, and so before I left, I changed the radio station to something called The Peak. It sounded okay, and the next morning I was rewarded. I spent Saturday in a bliss, doing my chores while listening to “Yellow” with Coldplay, “Last nite” with The Strokes, the wonderful “Such great heights” with The Postal Service and even Florence + the Machine’s “Shake it out”, one of the best new songs to come out last year. They didn’t only play great bands, they even managed to choose my favourite songs by those bands.
It didn’t last, though. On Sunday morning, someone changed the station again and this time we ended up with some real, all-American country. Slightly better than Sonic, mostly because their playlist is more diverse, but still. I end up cleaning really quickly in the stalls, just to get away out into the paddocks, so I won’t have to listen to those nasal singers more than necessary. Which might be good for the job, but not very constructive for my mood.
I miss the Swedish public service stations. But in a week, when the three Germans have left, I will be the one who has been here the longest, which means that I will be the boss. Which gives me the right to choose the radio station. No more Bruno Mars, no more country. I am nothing, if not a music snob. That’s just how my dad raised me.
Katja Malmborg 