What’s your all-time favorite album?

I think the only appropriate way to answer this question requires me to clarify something. In the era of streaming music, most people don’t focus on whole albums anymore, even though bands and musical artists still compile and release music in albums.

So, I don’t necessarily have a favorite album from anything in the last decade or so.

Also, I think for an album to specifically be labeled as a favorite, you need to enjoy a majority of the songs on it.

This has only happened a few times for me.

The ones that come to mind are Weezer (Blue Album) by Weezer, The E.N.D. by Black Eyed Peas, and Stadium Arcadium by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

At the time that I was listening to these albums, back in college, I listened to each one from beginning to end multiple times on my drives to and from campus. (To be clear, the periods of each album for me never overlapped.)

Thinking about this, I kind of want to go listen to them again. It’s been too long.

What do you listen to while you work?

It depends on the situation. Am I doing something that requires my brain to be active and thinking through things, or am I doing something mindless?

If I’m trying to actively think and process, I don’t usually listen to anything. If I need to tune out the background noise I’ll try wearing my earbuds and activate the noise cancelling feature. Admittedly, there was a period at work where I had built a playlist of Japanese music because I could trick my brain into not focusing on the lyrics since I can’t understand them, they’re just extra sound.

Doing mindless activities like driving on the interstate (I’m a lot more focused in town, promise) working out, or playing some kind of video game where I need to do some grinding for materials I’ll put on music and keep the volume low. Cooking and cleaning kind of fall in this category, too, now that I think about it.