Music while you work – mood music

Make the music fit the mood - that's the mantra for all homeworkers with the iTunes or radio on (and was recognised in this 1942 Time magazine article in which an American housewife says: "the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth is just the right rhythm for polishing the 'furniture; the second movement of his Fifth is a mopping-the-kitchen-floor rhythm. Siegfried Idyll makes picking mud up from the children's boots not irksome in the least."). Last week I wrote about what music I played when I felt relaxed. When I'm irritated on the other hand, instead of playing something calming, I tend to turn to loud music from my teenage years. One example is The Mighty Lemon Drops, a terribly underrated band from Wolverhampton who should have been as big as Oasis. You can hear a (atmospherically early) live version of Something Happens from 1986 here, courtesy of Tom Bartlett's In Everything You Do site. And then go out and buy their excellent album World Without End.