Music wars

Over the two decades that Carissa and I have been married, the single biggest threat to our union has been finding music we can enjoy together while traveling in an automobile. And by enjoy I mean music that does not provoke one or the other of us into insane fits of violent rage. Rather than mellow with age, our music rage has escalated with time for two reasons. First, as nature intended, I have become a cranky old man increasingly intolerant of popular music, defined as whatever is playing on top forty radio plus whatever crap is coming out of Nashville these days. Second, contrary to nature, Carissa has become increasingly and disturbingly devoted to current top forty radio playlists.

This is how our conflict manifests itself. We’re headed out of town on a family road trip. The kids are seat-belted and head-phoned, watching videos or listening to music. Baggage is stowed, coffee mugs  loaded. While I am preoccupied with backing out of the driveway, Carissa plugs her iPod into the stereo jack and cranks up her playlist. Seriously? I like to party in the USA as much as the next American. But when Miley Cyrus sings it, I feel a sharp, throbbing pain at the base of my skull. So I grab for the skip button on the iPod while backing over the garbage and recycling bins by the curb. Pushing the skip button provides no relief. Bring sexy back if you must, Mr. Timberlake, and demand that all the single ladies put a ring on it, Ms. Beyonce. You go girl. But make this happen without subjecting me to your overly-produced contemporary hip hop rhythm through my own automobile stereo system. To stop the noise, I attempt to yank the iPod out of the stereo jack while swerving to avoid our mailbox. Carissa strikes back, twisting the iPod from my grasp. We struggle. Swerving, I flatten one of those neon yellowish-green cutouts of a playing child wearing a tiny cap and holding a little orange flag that neighbors put on our street to keep kids safe. Hilarity ensues.  

I don’t want to sound judgmental or overly harsh about Carissa and her music. But really, it completely sucks. Let’s stipulate up front that my wife is an intellectual force. She has a Ph.D. She knows how to create and use algorithms (whatever those are). She has articles published in academic journals. She is invited to conferences as the keynote speaker. She chairs a multi-state coalition whose purposes I struggle to fully comprehend. But she listens to and seems to enjoy music that is marketed to sixteen-year-old girls who probably aren’t going to do that well on the SAT.

I should acknowledge that if Carissa’s musical preferences go down like strawberry-mango daiquiris topped with frilly umbrellas, mine go down like cheap bourbon and a hard pack of Marlboro reds. I mostly listen to singer/songwriter "alternative country" artists who write better than they sing and may be more likely to develop cirrhosis of the liver than record a top forty county hit (and possibly prefer it that way). Carissa thinks my musical library is too twangy (as if that were possible) and has too many songs about drinking and one-night stands. She apparently isn’t paying attention since there are also songs about . . . about . . . um . . . other stuff too, I'm pretty sure. The bottom line: When I honestly and objectively evaluate our musical preferences, I have to say that mine are vastly superior to Carissa’s. Truth can hurt.

But identifying the problem doesn't solve the problem of finding music that we can together enjoy. Over time, we have negotiated an uneasy truce: stick to classic rock and a narrow selection of alternative country rockers and just maybe we won't destroy our family. Here’s a Venn diagram I constructed to illustrate how we have come together musically. The artists in the overlap represent those who are tolerable to both of us:

A few things to notice here. First, I just created a Venn diagram. So I'm kinda the shit in this house, Dr. Carissa Moffat Miller with your fancy regression analysis modeling and such. Second, holy mother of Stevie Ray Vaughn I apparently have a fetish for Texas artists with three names. Third, nobody on my list substitutes a letter in their name with a symbol. Just sayin'.

The chart also demonstrates that reasonable people can come to reasonable compromises. We have learned to play only classic rock in order to prevent road trips from becoming events our children someday talk to their therapists about. But because neither of us have ever had much classic rock in our music collection, our selection of common denominators has been a bit limited. Even Tom Petty's Mary Jane's Last Dance gets old after the fifth or sixth time it comes up on a seven-hour trip.  But technology has rescued our road-trip relationship. Most recently, thanks to a Pandora Radio subscription, we select the Tom Petty station and sit back for a targeted mix of wall-to-wall classic rock with no commercials and unlimited skips. As my friend Miley might say: "Got my hands up, they're playin' my song/And now I'm gonna be OK//Yeah! It's a party in the USA!/Yeah! It's a party in the USA!"

Free Bird!