[Tannhauser]

Hang on, hup hup.

There. I'm on my soapbox. Right.

Nothing in lifting infuriates me more than the whole music issue. See, to me, music isn't something you have on as an adjunct to an activity. Music is something you listen to. I have zero ability to filter it out - if it's on, I'm listening to it.

I spend all of my time when I'm working out listening to someone else's taste in music. Which invariably sucks, because (a) gym owners aren't generally music afficionados (b) most of the clientele aren't either.

In my old gym, I was bombarded by the same fifteen-twenty songs in rotation. This was chart music,all the latest vapid, blank-faced autotuned poptarts. Nursery room porridge with every last atom of soul systematically removed from it by automatons, laser-targeting sex and rebellion at clueless teens.

So I stopped going there.

The new gym's music is even worse: Jay-Z and Dizzee Rascal and Eminem in an endless loop. I love the gym, but the owners, bless 'em, have yet to discover that there is a whole universe of music outside of this tiny, tiny little corner. It's so boring and pedestrian and lacking in any kind of ambition. The lyrics are simple-minded doggerel, prurient and ugly - urban poetry, my fat arse - full of faux resentment. Harmony and melody - at least you get those in pop - are pared back. Plenty of rhythm, of course, but even that's mind-numbingly dull.

I watch other people working out, indifferent to all this thudding nonsense around them, whistling along out of time and out of tune, and I think: I wish I could be like you for a few hours a week. I wish I just didn't care what was on, so long as the tempo suited me.

Music makes my visits to the gym an ordeal, and I sometimes cut workouts short so I won't have to listen to 'Ninety-nine problems but the bitch ain't one' again.