Via Fark, there’s an article “Endless carols endless torture, groups say” which says:
“Forcing store clerks to listen to the same holiday music over and over could be akin to torture and should change, a British noise pollution group said.”
I can attest to the fact that even as a decade has past since I worked in a retail shop that played the same music over and over, I still cannot stand to hear even a few notes of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. That damned music makes me bat-shiat crazy, even a decade later.
Even more crazy was that we were allowed to play whatever we wanted, as long as the store had that tape or CD in stock. However, if a customer requested something, we had to play that. So, of course, you can guess, just about every freakin’ customer requested that damned CD of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
Wikipedia has this to say:
“The same two-bar bass line and harmonic sequence is repeated over and over, about 50 times in total. … Afterwards, the piece gradually returns to a less complex structure as the note values lengthen once more. There are some 28 repetitions of the ground bass in total. The canon is relatively simple and does not make use of any advanced counterpoint devices such as inversion, augmentation, diminution, etc.”
Repetative. Boring. Popular.
Torture indeed. Endless anything endless torture, I say, especially if it’s popular.