The function of music in the workplace.

The Quietus’ first interview with a Professor of Sociology of Work.

We spend 40-45 hours at work a week, but if you look at our key medium of popular culture – pop songs – they hardly reference work at all. You could come up with a list of twenty quite easily I’m sure, but they’re quite unusual: it’s a rarity for pop songs to reference work at all. I’m lucky enough to own all the singles released by Motown and there’s about two of them that reference it!

I’m quite glad that radios in the workplace have largely been replaced by headphones.