Involuntary Background Music

At work, the programmer I share a cubical with has found a way to combat the constant "Hey Jeff" noise from my area. He simply plugs in his earbuds and cranks up his 'tunes.

However, last week the term "tunes" didn't quite apply. It was one single tune, played over and over. I know, because it was loud enough that I could hear it. There's no way this was multiple songs. Constant repetitive involuntary background music, not quite as loud as what you'd hear in an elevator.

The song sounded like a combo of some Americanized Anime Saturday morning cartoon theme, and New Kids on the Block. As a bonus, the vocals (female) seemed to have a metallic echo-y effect applied to them, like T-Pain (or Peter Frampton, if you'd rather kick it old school).

It was mostly hilarious, and a little maddening. It was like the Saturday-morning easy-pop version of Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung". Never-ending happy-pop with auto-tune.

Seriously, there's no way that many hyphens can be healthy.

After three days, the Anime Opera ended, and he switched to something that sounded like a big-band jazz group. It was still amazingly repetitive, with the trumpets squealing out the same riff over and over, but it was a nice change of pace to my ears.

Variety is the spice of life, after all.

If you're interested, here's Peter Frampton and his "Talk Box" to give you an idea of the metallic vocal effects I was hearing. There's no way in blazes that I'd link to a T-Pain 'vid. :)



Worth noting: The phrase "Hey Jeff" has actually started causing nervous tics and eye spasms every time I hear it. Therefore, I've started pretending to hear other phrases instead. Currently, when someone says "Hey Jeff" my mind translates that to, "'Sup, Supa-fly!"

It's silly, but I twitch less.