The music was worse than the dentist:
Recently, I spent a half-hour doing Kegel exercises at the dentist, not to distract myself from the cleaning, but from the awful music. This wasn’t soothing spa music, oldies, or top 40 fluff. It was some contemporary country crap—and I’m really sorry if that’s your jam, but I found it intolerable—monotone and formulaic. Each song sounded the same, like twangy synthesized schlock, leaving me stuck in a bad rodeo bar.
The fact is, though, I’m ridiculously sensitive to background sound, especially music I don’t choose.
Kenny G made me cry in the candy aisle
Years ago, I worked as a picture framing designer where sappy “lite” jazz played all day. For every person who adores jazz, there’s someone else who can’t stand what sounds like chaotic dissonance. Lite jazz, aka soft jazz, is even worse because it’s tranquilized for commercial use. Every afternoon, without fail, Kenny G’s syrupy soprano sax from The Moment oozed out of the speakers like Prozac molasses. It didn’t calm me. It did the opposite.
One day I couldn’t take it anymore. You could say I had a moment. I bolted to the drugstore a few doors down in the strip mall to get a break. Guess what was playing from the speakers? Kenny Freaking G. I almost had a meltdown in the aisle between the Snickers and the sympathy cards.
What I remember most is that it made me want to set cars on fire. Metaphorically.
Waiting room playlist fail
Let’s also include inappropriate waiting-room playlists. Once, I sat in a mammogram waiting room, half-naked and feeling vulnerable in a wrap gown, when some sexy pop song came on. I thought, Really? This is the soundtrack to relax me before for this uncomfortable medical test? So wrong.
I thought of a Mary Gaitskill short story where one character is compelled to turn off the music because of how it made her feel.
Valerie got up and put on a tape of piano jazz and made them a big pancake breakfast. They ate it on a rickety table on their back porch. It was nice, except the sauciness of the jazz suddenly sounded so self-satisfied that she had to go in and turn it off. “I’m sorry,” she said when she came back out. “That music was making me feel like an asshole.” Michael laughed…
~Mary Gaitskill, from the short story “The Blanket,” Because They Wanted To
That line lives rent-free in my head because I get it. Some songs don’t just annoy me. They hijack my mood.
Hide the matches.
Auditory overload
What I’m describing has a name: auditory overload. When neurodivergent people feel they have control over the sounds around them, they can often tolerate, even enjoy, high noise levels.
This is why Serenity, the overanxious main character in my novel Love and Other Incurable Ailments, listens to punk rock. For her, it’s not just music. It’s survival. Loud and unapologetic, it drowns out everything else.
I’ll happily crank up my own playlist and feel calm.
But when I don’t have control over the sound environment, even small amounts of noise can be overwhelming, distracting, or just plain unbearable. That’s why Kenny G in the drugstore or sexy tunes in a mammogram waiting room feel so absurdly intolerable.
Solutions
The simple solution is to always carry earbuds. Control over sound makes all the difference. Often, it’s the line between meltdown and manageable.
For example, last week I sat in a doctor’s waiting room next to a young man and his mother. The guy was sniffling nonstop in huge gross snorts and the mom was humming along to Joe Cocker playing on the speakers, essentially ruining good music for everyone near her. She’d stop to yak loudly with him and then resume humming.
I reached into my purse, popped in earbuds and listened to a new episode of Totally Booked with Zibby. Much better.
If all else fails, well, there are always Kegels.
Any other high-tension friends feel this way about music? How do you cope when you can’t escape the noise?
Thank you for visiting!
My upcoming novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments (10-27-2026, Regal House Publishing), is about an anxious overthinker whose fixation on a stranger pulls her straight into chaos, heartbreak, and the inconvenient unraveling of her carefully constructed life.
If you can relate to the pain of bad music, please preorder LOVE AND OTHER INCURABLE AILMENTS. I’ll be forever grateful. Preorders help books get noticed. They signal demand to publishers and bookstores, which leads to wider distribution and more visibility. You’re essentially helping the book reach more readers.
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