Selects: Muzak: Easy Listening Goodness

Muzak got a bad reputation as bland garbage music. In this classic episode, we aim to set the record straight. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:04Josh Clark?

  Hey there, everybody. It's me, Josh, and for this week's S Y S K Select, I've chosen our 2021 episode on Muzak. And you might ask, who could possibly like the noisome, omnipresent annoyance that was Muzak? Well, me, I like Muzak, so there. But if you're not over 40, you might not even know that there was a time you couldn't step out in public, from department stores, those are in something we call malls, to elevators, without schmaltzy string arrangements of pop music pummeling you with their saccharine sound. And you know what? You're the worst off for not having experienced it. Instead, you can experience this episode, and I hope you enjoy it.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:58Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there and there's Dave C. Cousten. I said it right this time.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  I thought it was Coustan. No?

• 2:15Josh Clark?

  If you're in France, that's how you would say it. But here in the United States, you say Cousten.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Can I start this off by saying something?

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  Oh, boy. I'm worried about what you're gonna say, but okay.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Well, this episode is on muzak and I started thinking last night, I was thinking about your love of muzak, which is not at all ironic.

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  Not in the least. But you can't say that kind of thing these days. People don't believe you.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  I know. It's true. Everyone I know, Josh, very well. And I was thinking of your, and I like all kinds of music too, but you know, in my heart, I'm a rock and roll guy. And I was thinking about your top musical genres that are above rock and roll in your picking order.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Not in order. I counted easy listening, muzak, disco, art rock, kraut rock. And I probably missed a couple.

• 3:08Josh Clark?

  Kraut rock is below rock and roll. I want to like kraut rock. It just doesn't quite jive with me. I like some, but not all of it.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  And then stuff, I think art rock is just sort of that avant garde. Like, I don't, you don't love Yoko, but you certainly are a bit of a Yoko apologist.

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Grace Jones, stuff like that.

• 3:25Josh Clark?

  Oh, I love Grace Jones, for sure. What about Talking Heads? They go in there too, right?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Oh, they'd probably be.

• 3:32Josh Clark?

  I mean, they literally went to art school together.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, they kind of span from art rock to new wave to like world music by the time they finished.

• 3:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah, I know.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  But, uh, yeah, I mean, I certainly love the Talking Heads, but all of those, for you, are above good old fashioned rock and roll, I think.

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah. You also left out 90s techno. I've been listening to a lot of that lately, too. Like, alternating the prodigy and everything.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  But you love muzak. You really do. I do too, actually. I don't know.

• 4:02Josh Clark?

  I'm so glad.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  I don't know how much I like, I will listen to some of that stuff and we'll talk about, we'll talk about Eno in here, of course. Old Sour Puss Brian, Eno. But I love listening to his ambient stuff, which he sort of wrote as an antidote to muzak. Again, we'll talk about that more later. But I do like, in certain circumstances, that muzak thing is really great to have on in my house as background music. And it serves that same purpose.

• 4:35Josh Clark?

  One of the big reasons why too is because you can get stuff done with it. Like lyrics can be so distracting. They just latch on to your brain and say, no, no, no, pay attention to me. I'm, I'm talking to you now. Muzak does the opposite of that. It says, go be free, but also enjoy this. Like, there's, there's like a whole part of your brain that muzak can tap into that doesn't require your conscious thought, but it still produces like good feelings and, you know, like people, people just smack muzak around like it's just, it's so bland and it's so soulless. And I totally disagree with that. Like, if you actually stop and listen to muzak, it's really, really technically proficient. It's frequently well done.

• 5:20Josh Clark?

  It's often very clever and creative and inventive, which is really saying something because you're doing this when they, in the confines of covering an existing song in a way that makes it familiar and easy to recognize, but also takes away any intrusiveness that it might have. It's tough to do and I really, I just, I love muzak. You're absolutely right. Like, I listened to muzak this whole time. Not just when we were, when we were researching muzak today, but also when I was researching the Havana syndrome. And I realized like, this is my normal thing. This is the same stuff I listen to when I'm researching anyway.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we can go ahead and dispel a couple of, or not myths, but clear up a couple of things right off the bat. First of all, muzak is a name brand. And people can kind of collectively use the term muzak or have collectively used that term for what's called like potted plant music or elevator music or shopping music. But it is actual, actually a brand name, which we'll get to the history of. And then the second thing is it gets the name elevator music.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Part of the myth is that people said, well, they put it on elevators because people were afraid to death of elevators early on and it calmed people down or it covered up the noise of the clanking elevators.

• 6:38Josh Clark?

  I'd never heard that before, did you?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, neither one of those things are true. Total myth. My guess is that it was played on elevators and because you're in such a closed little box that's usually quiet, it just was way more noticeable than like in a big office full of people working. So people called it elevator music. That's my guess.

• 7:00Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah. I mean, yeah, there wasn't music on elevators before, but for several decades in the 20th century, like there, there weren't many elevators you could get on because people didn't have elevators in their house. So it was a public building you're in where they weren't playing music to, of some form, very frequently muzak.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  That great Blues Brothers scene?

• 7:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Hut, hut, hut, hut.

• 7:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because they're, they're going up to the, what, the Cook County assessor's office and like there, there's the entire Chicago Police Department is after them, but they're forced to get on this elevator and the, the girl from Ipanema is playing.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  I think my favorite part of that scene is there's just dozens and hundreds of cops and SWAT guys just, you know, hut, hut, hut, hut, hut, when they're rappelling and doing all this stuff. And then there's the one shot of the lone guy rappelling down the side of the building and he's by himself just going hut, hut, hut, hut.

• 7:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's a good one.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  So funny.

• 8:02Josh Clark?

  There's another scene too, from around that era, a few years later, from Airplane Two, where it's like Rip Torn, I believe it's Rip Torn, the arty from the Larry Sanders Show.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:17Josh Clark?

  And I don't know the other guy he's talking to, but anyway, they're walking and talking and they have to get on an elevator and the elevator door opens and it's just blaring like, like eardrum shattering decibel, MacArthur Park. And they have to get on, people are coming off the elevator like with their hands to their ears, like with splitting headaches from this, but it's just completely the opposite. The way elevator music's supposed to be like, but it's a good little scene, too, as far as elevator music goes.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, that's kind of one of the points, too, is muzak has long been a movie trope and a TV trope and then been lampooned in scenes just like the Blues Brothers scene, where there's something chaotic going on and then you cut back to the sound of muzak playing wherever the other scene is setting.

• 9:00Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Very, very fun stuff.

• 9:02Josh Clark?

  But that started, I guess it started with the Blues Brothers, which came out in 1980. But before that, that was like, muzak was not really lampooned. I mean, not everybody liked it. It really kind of started to get a little backlash in the late 60s, early 70s, as we'll see. But there was a very significant chunk of the 20th century, again, from maybe 1950 to 1980, we'll say, where everywhere you went in public, including if you took a Greyhound bus, or if you were on a plane, or you happened to be in Air Force One, or you were at the mall, in an elevator, at your office, everywhere, muzak was playing.

• 9:45Josh Clark?

  There was muzak playing everywhere. It was just a part of life that was inescapable, actually.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so let's go back in time and talk about the inventor of muzak. And this is sort of a fun fact of muzak. The man's name is George Square. It is spelled Squire, but he swears it's pronounced Square.

• 10:07Josh Clark?

  I'm really impressed, man. I had not come up with that one.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Or he swore it was pronounced Square. Yeah, that's kind of one of the funny jokes, like the guy who invented muzaks was Square.

• 10:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  But Major General George Square was born in 1865, if you believe that. And he has just a laundry list of accomplishments as a human being. He was, he earned a doctorate from Johns Hopkins in electrical science. He was an army engineer with a PhD, I think the first one.

• 10:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  And he was, I believe, the lead Signal Corps officer for the Army as well?

• 10:43Josh Clark?

  He was. He also was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, which connects this episode to the other one today.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 10:52Josh Clark?

  Because he came up with something called a tree telephone. He figured out how to use any tree, but preferably one with fully leaved, I guess. I don't know what you'd call that. As a receiver and transmitter for radio signals. He figured out how to use a tree, a living tree for that.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  He was, here's another little fun fact. He was one of the first airplane passengers ever because he was way into human flight and got together with the Wright Brothers and in 1906 consulted with them. And they said, hey, why don't you take a ride in our new little biplane? You'll probably live.

• 11:31Josh Clark?

  Right. I looked at our, I looked at the document for our Wright Brothers episode and he did not appear. I don't think we mentioned him. But he might, he might have been the first airline passenger from what I saw.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, where he really made a big name for himself, pre-Muzak, was this invention, which is what we call multiplexing, which is he figured out, or maybe wire wireless communications, which is something he worked on with the Army. He basically figured out how to get multiple uses out of single telephone lines. Telephone wires were, you know, there are only so many. So you were really limited as to what you could do with them and how many people could use them. So he basically figured out a way to increase their output and efficiency by multiplexing and by sending, superimposing high-frequency radio signals over those low-frequency telegraph signals,

• 12:27Speaker 02

  basically just allowing you to use the wire at the same time, the same wire.

• 12:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like if you think of like a wave, if it's low frequency, there's big wide gaps in between. You can fit a higher frequency that's tighter and squished together in those gaps, but you're still using the same line. And, you know, this was the guy who came up with that. That's an enormous advancement in telecommunications that we're still putting use today in some applications, but definitely helped like the early internet along. It was just a huge contribution to humanity. Like, forget even just Muzak. Like, just that alone would probably warrant like an episode for George Square.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think he was like, everyone should be able to use this. So I'm gonna open source it and everyone can use this new multiplexing technology. AT&T came along and said, we'll use it. And then, you know what? You stole it from us, actually.

• 13:23Josh Clark?

  Right. He came up with it, but since he left it open, they decided to just take it from him and sue him for it.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  I think he sued them, but it didn't work.

• 13:33Josh Clark?

  That's right. You're right. But he still was able to use this wire wireless technology with multiplexing. And at the time, people were starting to get into radio broadcasts, but wireless radio, like that you would just have in your house, it's picking up radio waves at a station, that was not widespread at the time. So George Square said, you know what? I understand people want music in their house. I'm gonna give it to them. I'm gonna use that multiplexing technology and I'm going to run sound waves over the electrical wires that go into the house.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Brilliant.

• 14:10Josh Clark?

  And I'm gonna sell this, it is brilliant. I'm gonna sell this service to people's homes for a dollar fifty a month, about twenty dollars today. And it's just part of your utility bill because it's coming in through your electrical company. And there's actually a section of Cleveland called the Lakewood, I believe Lakewood area, that was the pilot for this wired wireless radio that George Square invented. The problem was is by the time they deployed it, wireless radio was already a thing.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:44Josh Clark?

  And so we had this really great idea that just no longer had an application.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was, he basically invented the first music subscription service.

• 14:53Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yeah. And he had multiple channels too. Like when you subscribed, you got news, you got dance music. There was like, I think, three different channels you could choose from.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Howard Stern.

• 15:06Josh Clark?

  Yep. Howard Stern was on back then.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Baba Booey. So he had that technology though. And he said, you know what? This is a good idea, though. Maybe I can think of how to use this in offices and stores. And in 1934, he looked up at Kodak, very successful corporation, and said, I love that name and I love music. Let's just call it Muzak. And history changed and maybe we should take a break.

• 15:35Josh Clark?

  Okay, let's do it.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 15:51Speaker 02

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• 16:02Josh Clark?

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• 16:37Speaker 02

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• 16:53Josh Clark?

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• 17:56Josh Clark?

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• 19:19Josh Clark?

  So in the parlance of today, Chuck, George Square and his Muzak Corporation pivoted from home consumer markets to business markets. And that just knocked it out of the park because it turned out that there were a lot of companies, hotels, restaurants, clubs, I think the Stork Club was an early customer, that said, you know what, it's really going to make our place seem fancy if we've got music piping in all the time. So yes, we would like to sign up for your service. And that's really where Muzak kind of started to take off.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Muzak, I mean, we haven't even said what it is. Surely people know, but Muzak are instrumental tracks. And you did mention that there were no vocals. So we kind of hinted at it.

• 20:11Josh Clark?

  It's a big one, yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  But they're instrumental tracks that are cover songs of kind of anything you can think of. I mean, I've heard some, some Muzak of some heavy rock. It can be classical music, it can be old standards. But the point is, they are instrumental versions that are rerecorded. They don't just take the vocals out. It's not karaoke style.

• 20:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  It is rerecord, arranged and recorded by professional, really good musicians, orchestras sometimes.

• 20:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  And it is, that's what it is. And it's great. The end.

• 20:45Josh Clark?

  And very, very frequently, it's, it's made into a much more mellow version of itself. Like, any rough edges are taken off. The, the, since they take the vocals out, it's not like there's not, there, that vocal melody is non-existent any longer. They just replace it with something else. So if they're trying to go for something like a little more upbeat or up tempo, they'll replace the, the vocals with, say, like a saxophone. If they're trying to do something a little more mellow, they'll replace the vocals with a string section.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, or harp, perhaps?

• 21:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's one of the things that, that Muzak is very famous for is like, what's called masses of strings, just strings upon strings. In fact, one of the early, I guess, big name Groups that produced muzak was called 101 Strings. And they probably were absolutely accurate in that. Like, there's just a lot, tons of strings everywhere. Violin, cellos, violas, every, every string instrument you can throw at it. They just layer upon layer in these songs. It's one of the hallmarks of, of muzak.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, and there are, there are many versions of Antonio Carlos Jobim's Girl from Ipanema, but the muzak version is one of the most popular. And that 101 Strings version is the most ubiquitous from that lot. I do encourage people to go watch the YouTube, though, of Frank Sinatra and Jobim singing that song live on TV. Because it's great in every way. They're just sitting next to each other and the shot isn't wide at first. And they're just sort of singing back and forth to each other. And Frank's doing his thing. And then it cuts to the wide and Frank is like totally kicked back with his legs crossed with a cigarette in his hand. Exactly like you would hope, but he looks like, I mean, he looks like he just not rolled out of bed because he's put together.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  But he looks like he rolled from his wicker bag to his wicker chair.

• 22:40Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  For this performance.

• 22:42Josh Clark?

  Can I get some cocaine in here, baby?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  That's so good. That's Joe Piscopo as Frank Sinatra.

• 22:48Josh Clark?

  Do you ever listen to Jobim's stuff?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Dude. I love that Old Lounge stuff. It's really great Brazilian stuff.

• 22:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, his record Stoneflower is just a masterpiece from beginning to end.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's good, good party music.

• 23:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's another thing, though, too, is like, it's so mellow that to, to take that kind of music and then make it into muzak is like, it's almost like it takes a certain amount of audacity.

• 23:17Josh Clark?

  Like, I was listening to, I found, so there's, I want to, I want to point people to two different muzak records that are on YouTube. One is called More Than Music, Period and Environment. It's a 1981 muzak record and it has a version of Sailing, Christopher Cross's Sailing. One of the most.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Already music to sleep to, yeah.

• 23:38Josh Clark?

  Exactly. They, they figured out how to basically make you lose control of your bladder, listening to this.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Music to wet your bed too.

• 23:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah. That's a good one. And then the other one is called The Blue Album. And it is from 1974, I believe. And it's just, both of them are really great. That's good, good introductions to muzak if you're not into it already.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  All right. So muzak is trucking along in the 30s. They get to the 40s and they think, you know what? We need a better way to sell this stuff and to pitch this to businesses and corporations. So why don't we hire some people to research music? And to figure out what kinds of music keep people happy and working? And because people, you know, they work hard in the morning and then they sort of lag a bit before lunch. And then they really lag sort of a couple of hours after lunch. So why don't we do this? Why don't we study it? Let's call it stimulus progression. It's a bit pseudoscience. It makes sense.

• 24:44Josh Clark?

  Is it though?

• 24:45Speaker 02

  It is in that it's not been proven. It makes sense to everyone who I feel like knows about it. Like, sure, music can pick you up and make you work harder. But it's pseudoscience in that it's, I don't think it's ever been scientifically proven.

• 25:01Josh Clark?

  I got you. Okay. Yeah, because I keep seeing it just like dismissed as pseudoscience. But then there were plenty of early studies that were done by legitimate industrial psychologists and other like efficiency experts, that kind of thing, that showed that there, there really was a significant like improvement in productivity or less sick days, that kind of stuff in places that have muzak compared to places that didn't have muzak pumped into the office.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think maybe their specific claims about a workday.

• 25:31Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Might have been a little, I mean, everywhere I read said it was basically not a marketing scam, but a marketing. Tool that they kind of invented.

• 25:41Josh Clark?

  I got you. But but so one thing to say about this, we're going to talk about it in a second stimulus progression, is that they they did kind of plow money that they were making. They were making a lot of money, starting in the late 40s, early 50s. They plowed it back into research to basically come up with scientific evidence to back up their claims, which you can really kind of see the ghost of George Square still looming over the company, you know, this this decade or so after he died. It's always been this kind of science interested, if not science based company, that's also been an early adopter of technology, as we'll see.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that is certainly fair. It was never just like, hey, we're just going to play a bunch of what people might consider droll background music. Like, they really did, I think, I don't think it was a scam. I think they really did try to study working environments. And what they did with his stimulus progression was they divided the workday into 15 minute increments, and basically set a DJ playlist every 15 minutes. And they assigned a stimulus value from one to six, one being really, really mellow, six being, you know, super up. And they basically went through and almost like a Pandora sort of curated playlist type of thing to get

• 27:08Speaker 02

  people to work hard and efficiently throughout a day. And companies bought in, including the US Army.

• 27:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think World War Two is basically cited as the the moment when Muzak kind of proved itself enough, at least to start being adopted by very large companies. And then, within a few years after the war, by like, the very early 50s, they started to spread more and more to even smaller and smaller companies. And it was this idea that if you played Muzak and Muzak's, you know, patented stimulus progression model, you know, you're going to avoid that mid morning slump that like, every worker. Goes through, you know, in productivity and then the mid afternoon slump, you could avoid that too. And think about how many more widgets you could make if your employees don't, you know, slack off productivity wise at 10:30,

• 28:01Josh Clark?

  from 10:30 to lunch and then from like 2:30 until they go home. Like imagine if this, this very pleasant music is just kind of keeping them humming along. What, what people call a forward, uh, it's just a unconscious sense of forward momentum. The tempo in your environment is moving subtly faster and faster. And so, um, to keep people from going insane, part of the stimulus progression was that the, the songs in a 15 minute increment would kind of go up in tempo and then you'd have a 15 minute break of silence. And then the music would come back on again, but then this 15 minutes, their, their first song,

• 28:43Josh Clark?

  the tempo of their first song would probably start a little faster than the tempo of the first song of the last 15 minutes.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:50Josh Clark?

  And so all of a sudden, next thing you know, you're making widgets like a maniac because you're being manipulated by the stimulus progression model. At least again, according to Muzak, I, I get what you're saying. Like it's not like, you know, Harvard came along and said, yes, we've studied this thoroughly and this is exactly what happens. This is, you know, company claims, but it is intuitively sensible at least.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, you need only to host a house party and play, and play music yourself.

• 29:22Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  To determine how music can affect the mood of a group of people. You put on Groove is in the Heart and you know what's going to happen.

• 29:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, everybody's going to shake their groove thing.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Everyone's going to shake their groove thing, shake their groove thing. If you put in, uh,

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Old Sour Puss Brian Eno's Music for Airports. Not a good party thing.

• 29:42Josh Clark?

  No, it's not. And since you brought him up for the second time, I say we discuss Brian Eno momentarily.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Sure. I mean, I love that record and I love a lot of his stuff, including his ambient music, experimental records. I think it's really, really good stuff to have on if it's a nice gray day outside and you're getting work done. I really enjoyed his background music, but it's definitely not up in any way.

• 30:12Josh Clark?

  You know what I found is a really good one for what you just described? You ever listen to Future Sound of London?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:19Josh Clark?

  They have an album, like a double album called Life Forms and it's about as amazing as Ambient gets. You should check that one out.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Emily, Emily. Emily got me into Ambient. I call her Emily when she's listening to that stuff. She really got me. She called it ambient groove. She really got me into that stuff over the years.

• 30:39Josh Clark?

  Is that like?

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Like 07 and, you know, stuff that's, she calls it ambient groovy, just sort of, sort of mellow and groovy and like 07 and more Chiba. And it was a certain era, I think, where that stuff peaked. Massive Attack a little bit.

• 30:55Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  It's good stuff.

• 30:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think you'd like Life Forms then. Future Sound of London's stuff is normally a little more, you know, it's super cerebral and intelligent, but it's also fairly dancy. Life Forms is probably their most ambient stuff around.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  So Eno, though, let's get back to him. He kind of came up with this as an antidote to Muzak, right?

• 31:16Josh Clark?

  Yes. If you like ambient music, you better thank your lucky stars for Muzak because were it not for Muzak, you might not have ambient music, at least not now. Maybe it would be coming 50 years from now. Who knows?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  I loved that in this article it says, "As reported by Red Bull Music." Eno said this, and this was, I think, for the liner notes, actually, to airport, or Music for Airports. "Whereas canned music's intention is to brighten the environment by adding stimulus to it, ambient music is intended to induce calm and space, and a space to think. Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention. Without enforcing one in particular, it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."

• 32:00Josh Clark?

  So, so he hits on something, though, that people would come to really resent about muzak. Is not even just necessarily the syrupiness of the music itself, but the intent behind the music, that it was always intended to basically manipulate your mood into making you a better worker, a more docile consumer. That it was poking at your brain to get you to do things that you may or may not want to do. Maybe you will be less likely to punch some guy on the bus because there's muzak playing, which is a good thing. We should not be punching other people on the bus. But the point is, is you're being mind controlled in a certain way.

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  And eventually, people got kind of resentful of that.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, that's true.

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  We're not there yet, though. We're not there yet. There was actually a point in time, though, Chuck, where muzak and popular music were basically one in the same.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was sort of, I mean, one of the heydays of muzak certainly was in that when, you know, when Glenn, the Glenn Miller Orchestra was pop music on the radio, muzak was in a far stretch from some of that stuff. So it was sort of all one in the same. I think it was as that, as styles changed and the 60s and 70s start rolling along, that muzak became really sort of a bad word to a lot of people.

• 33:28Josh Clark?

  Right, and one of the reasons I saw that really explained it to me because, you know, things changed, society just changed between the 1950s and the 1960s. It just abruptly changed. But that doesn't fully explain why Muzak just was suddenly looked down upon. A good explanation I saw is that lyrics became really, really important in the late 60s. People had something to say, and Muzak does not include lyrics. It completely undermines the point of Muzak if you put lyrics in or don't rearrange the lyrics with strings. So Muzak kind of couldn't keep up with that. It's not like it went away.

• 34:13Josh Clark?

  It doubled down, it kept doing what it was doing. And in fact, it would take some of those pop hits that had really monumentally important lyrics and just take the lyrics out and replace it with a saxophone or something like that.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, they didn't have to do that. I think it's interesting. They could have had a really mellow singer at a certain point come in. And I really respect the fact that they were like, nope, the singer has a violin and I don't want to hear it anymore.

• 34:37Josh Clark?

  Right, but a lot of these songwriters in particular, like I think Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, Boz Skaggs, all of them refused to let their music be covered by Muzak or any of its competitors. But Paul Simon I saw said he always knew he had a hit when he heard a Muzak version of it, like at the mall or something like that. Which is kind of like Weird Al covering Nirvana. Like Cobain said that he knew that Nirvana had made it when Weird Al covered Smells Like Teen Spirit. I think that's basically the same thing.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Oh, I think most musicians, unless you're a Ted Nugent, and we'll get to that, but very famously sort of offered to buy Muzak when they fell upon hard times so he could basically burn it to the ground. I think most musicians. Deep down, think it's kind of an honor when one of their songs is muzakified.

• 35:34Josh Clark?

  It's got, yeah, you'd have to.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  It's gotta be cool, right?

• 35:36Josh Clark?

  I just want to find out what somebody's gonna do with it. Because like I was saying at the beginning, like, it really takes some creativity to come up with, okay, what can I replace this with? That's not just completely predictable or boring, but also isn't gonna grab everybody's attention. Because that's, again, not the point of muzak. It's, it's one of the, the, um, the, I don't know if it was a slogan of the Muzak Corporation or not, but they basically said that they fill in the awkward pauses in life.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 36:06Josh Clark?

  To where, you know.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  It's good to say it.

• 36:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you don't, like, it's like you were saying at the party. If you're at a party that doesn't have any music on, you just probably just get smashed out of your skull because you're just trying to lubricate the social situation so much. Whereas if you put on music, it's like it takes a lot of that edge off. That was one of the points, too, with muzak. And then also to kind of get you to linger a little longer when you were shopping in a store. That was, that was part of it as well.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, music, we almost always have music on in our house unless, you know, it's night and we're watching, you know, a movie or watching something on TV. But at almost all waking hours, we have music playing in our home. And it just feels weird and quiet and not full of life when it's, when there's no music happening.

• 36:55Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  It's strange.

• 36:57Josh Clark?

  It can be strange, for sure.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 37:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we're, we have reached basically the early 70s, which is muzak's first crisis point. And we'll come back to that after this.

• 37:23Josh Clark?

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• 37:46Josh Clark?

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• 38:01Speaker 02

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• 38:26Josh Clark?

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• 38:44Speaker 02

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• 38:59Josh Clark?

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• 39:11Speaker 02

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• 39:49Speaker 02

  All right, so I'm born in 1971. And Muzak starts to die a little bit.

• 39:59Josh Clark?

  A little bit.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Because a real rock and roller came into the world.

• 40:02Josh Clark?

  That's right. Born with a jean jacket with the Van Halen logo on marker in the back.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  It did not go away completely, though. It was just sort of, I guess, the beginning of the end. But that didn't mean there wasn't still a business model for Muzak. Because Muzak was never about its popularity.

• 40:22Josh Clark?

  No, but there was a time where it was popular. Like JFK had it on Air Force One. Eisenhower had it piped into the White House. It was playing onboard Apollo 11.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:33Josh Clark?

  Like, it was everywhere. Like, it's really hard to get across how ubiquitous it was. But I found a quote from a guy named Professor Gary Gumpert of Queens College in New York.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 40:46Josh Clark?

  He said that at the time, Muzak was just kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us. It never startles us. It is never too loud. It's never too silent. It's always there.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:59Josh Clark?

  And that was what it was like. You were just kind of moving from one placid bucolic field to the next, going from mall to mall, store to store, elevator to elevator, bus ride to bus ride. It was just absolutely everywhere. So compared to that, the idea that it's absolutely everywhere unquestioned, yeah, it really kind of started to take a bit of a downturn in the 70s. But it just didn't go anywhere yet. It took decades for it to really take a hit.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, even in the 80s, it was syndicated in 19 countries. There were 80 million people listening, whether or not they wanted to or not, listening to Muzak every day.

• 41:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  And the company ended up being bought and sold a couple of times over the years. I think in 81, or in 72, a company called Teleprompter owned it.

• 41:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  In 81, Westinghouse bought it. And I don't know if I believe this. The story goes that Westinghouse learned later on, when they were buying Teleprompter, that they owned Muzak. And apparently, they didn't know that.

• 41:58Josh Clark?

  That's what fundinguniverse.com says.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, who doesn't? Maybe back then, they didn't do research into purchasing entire corporations.

• 42:06Josh Clark?

  They were on a lot of scotch at the time, man.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Although, we've had companies that bought websites and then they learned that there was a podcast program attached.

• 42:15Josh Clark?

  I think I've heard of that, Things You Should Do or something like that.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, actually, that could happen, now that I think about it.

• 42:22Josh Clark?

  That's right. Yeah, I kind of actually felt a deeper affinity for Muzak when I learned how many times they've been passed around, corporation by corporation.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  And then, I think in the, I think it was, when did YESCO come along? Was that the 90s?

• 42:36Josh Clark?

  So, YESCO was around from the 60s.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Well, when they finally came together, though, right?

• 42:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but they were an early competitor, I guess a kind of a midlife competitor to Muzak. But by the 80s, YESCO had established a name for itself by doing basically the opposite of what Muzak did. Rather than making, you know, covers of canned music without lyrics, they would just go get the licenses of like the hot new song of the moment and play those. And so, rather than background music, which is what Muzak's whole jam was, these guys were pioneering foreground music. And they were just this small little outfit from Seattle that, you know, it was kind of like the little engine that could.

• 43:26Josh Clark?

  And they changed the entire landscape, the audio landscape of the United States, just by being persistent, by getting that word out that, hey, now foreground's the way to go, not background, that's old stuff.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that's why today, when you go into Publix to do your grocery shopping, you'll hear Christopher Cross singing Sailing, instead of the Muzak version of Sailing.

• 43:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, can't we just get both, though?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 43:54Josh Clark?

  Do we have to choose?

• 43:56Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm a big Christopher Cross fan. You're not going to find a bigger fan than me.

• 44:01Josh Clark?

  For real? You like him that much?

• 44:03Speaker 02

  No, he's great. I got his two big albums I still have on my shelf.

• 44:08Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah? Well, he's sitting in the other room at my house right now.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Well, I guess you're the bigger fan.

• 44:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  You're like, no, no, no, he's just tied up.

• 44:16Josh Clark?

  Well, I was gonna say, I mean, he's not here on his will, under his own will. In fact, you could make a pretty strong case, he's here against his will, but...

• 44:25Speaker 02

  So, in 1984, though, is when YESCO got...

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Officially involved with Muzak. I think Muzak was, did they actually file for bankruptcy? Or were they just at that sort of precipice?

• 44:39Josh Clark?

  Not yet. They were teetering right there on the edge and it was actually, they were bought by the Fields Company, the company that owns Marshall Fields. So Chicago makes another appearance. And the Fields Company said, we like where this Yescow Group is going. We're going to merge with them. So Muzak actually merged with Yescow, the smaller company, but then ended up moving to Seattle, right before the grunge movement hit. So Seattle's big musical contribution before grunge was Muzak.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. I remember seeing the, I remember seeing that logo. I mean, you've probably seen the vans around before and really not known. It's that M with the circle around it.

• 45:19Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  I remember when I first saw that, I was like, wait a minute, is that the Muzak?

• 45:23Josh Clark?

  That's, yeah, and that was a big update. They apparently went with some design group, I can't remember the name of it, that just completely reinvented the brand.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:31Josh Clark?

  Because they went from being in the background to manipulating your mood using stimulus progression to this other thing, this new made up sounding thing called, what's it called? Quantum?

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Physics, mechanics, suicide.

• 45:51Josh Clark?

  Keep guessing. What else?

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Uh, realm, leap.

• 45:56Josh Clark?

  Nope.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Those are all the quantum's I know.

• 45:58Josh Clark?

  There's gotta be another one Chuck, because I'm still looking.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  I'm so sorry.

• 46:04Josh Clark?

  What the heck is that thing called?

• 46:04Speaker 02

  It's called, it's Quantum Leap.

• 46:06Josh Clark?

  We'll just call it Quantum Leap, sure.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:10Josh Clark?

  So with this Quantum Leap thing that they had going on.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  The bacula effect.

• 46:15Josh Clark?

  Quantum modulation.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  The bacula effect.

• 46:17Josh Clark?

  Quantum modulation, okay?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 46:19Josh Clark?

  Although I like bacula effect, that's a great one. With quantum modulation, it was, we are evoking an emotion that is now tied forever to this, the brand that you're shopping, the store you're shopping in right now.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:38Josh Clark?

  So like this, this one, so they hire people who make playlists, who curate these playlists that are, start to finish, they all share this one theme, they all kind of have this one, like, cool. Um, not scary, uh, super hip, beachy, you know, spring break 2008 kind of thing, whatever.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  The best.

• 47:02Josh Clark?

  So, um, that, like, a company will, will say, this is, this is what our brand is all about. Give us playlists that fit this. And so now you're, you're kind of like, you, you feel cool because of the music of where you're shopping. And so that makes you want to shop and associate yourself with that place even more. That's what Muzak, that's what the, what's called Neo Muzak is, is all about. That's, that's the current state of affairs in the industry.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, uh, take, if you want to use Armani Exchange as an example, what they'll do is they will literally try and make like a DJ mix with, uh, that has beat matches and it doesn't break the momentum and it's all crossfaded. Whereas if Ann Taylor calls them up, they don't want to crossfade. They want Celine Dion songs and then a little bit of a small break and then a Sting song coming on. And these gentle fades in and fades out. And, you know, it's the same sort of stuff. It's just curated foreground music.

• 48:00Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  What I love about Muzak is, uh, in the end, when they were finally, uh, acquired, they had 1.5 million commercially recorded songs in their catalog. And they called that The Well.

• 48:14Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  That's amazing. Almost 800 Beatles songs.

• 48:18Josh Clark?

  It is. I think that's why they never fully went under. It's that catalog kept them commercially viable for sale.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Super valuable. It's gotta be.

• 48:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So they were bought in, I think, 2009, maybe, by a group called Mood Music.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  2011.

• 48:33Josh Clark?

  2011. And then two years later, they retired the Muzak name forever. Just couldn't do anything with it. So now it's Mood Music is the company that, that owns The Well. But they're doing that whole for, okay. They're doing that whole foreground music, quantum, uh, modulation type thing where, you know, you just associate a brand with a certain kind of music. Like, you wouldn't walk into that Armani Exchange and hear, you know,

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Christopher Cross.

• 49:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Christopher Cross. You'd be like, something's off here. The Mood, Mood, uh, what is it? Mood Media? Their, their job is to make sure that there's nothing off while you're in that store, that it all just kind of fits together and you feel good about where you're shopping.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  I don't know though, man. You want to, you want to move some Armani gear? Put on, You Can Call Me Al. And just watch it fly off the shelves.

• 49:24Josh Clark?

  Man, those kids would freak out. Their frosted tips would stand up on end.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Dun dun dun dun. They're like, what is this? This is amazing.

• 49:33Josh Clark?

  I've never felt more alive.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Why is Chevy Chase in here?

• 49:37Josh Clark?

  Oh, man.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  A really cool thing, though, is what you were talking about with Muzak being on the tech forefront.

• 49:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  It's really cool that over the years, they were always early adopters of tech. And it's funny to think about them that way, but they were always on the, on the leading edge and the forefront of what technology was doing.

• 49:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they, I don't know if they invented them, but they certainly were early adopters, if not pioneers, in vinyl records. People were not using vinyl at the time. Then they eventually ditched the vinyl records in favor of an electronic brain called Mater. M, the number eight, and the letter R. Which basically was a big deck of reel to reel tapes. They had a bunch of different songs on it, but they had different inaudible pulses that would trigger a different one to come on next. So you could curate lists on these huge reel to reels. It was just amazing. They were using this thing starting in the 50s. So the whole thing became kind of automated. They launched their own satellite in the 70s.

• 50:41Josh Clark?

  They had a computer database in the 70s. Like, they were very much pioneers and early adopters of a lot of different technology that we take for granted today.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you could make an argument that they were doing the Pandora Spotify thing decades before they were doing it.

• 50:56Josh Clark?

  Absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, the whole point of it, too, is virtually unchanged. I mean, it's not necessarily to make you a docile shopper anymore, but it's to, like, they're trying to make you feel like that brand is part of your identity by evoking memories in you, using songs to unlock them.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 51:20Josh Clark?

  Pretty interesting stuff, man.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go, what were those two records again? I wanna write this down.

• 51:25Josh Clark?

  Okay, one is More Than Music, Period and Environment, 1981 Muzak record. That has not just Sailing on it, it has Olivia Newton-John's Magic. It has Take Your Time, Do It Right. Which, I don't care if the lyrics are there or not. If you're sitting next to your mom in a doctor's office and Baby, You Can Do It, Take Your Time, Do It Right comes on, you both know what that song's about, you know?

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:53Josh Clark?

  It may even be more uncomfortable in that situation. And then it ends with Funky Town.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 51:59Josh Clark?

  It's a good one. The other one's called The Blue Album. It's a complete stimulus progression album. And it has a bunch of good songs on it, including Orleans Dance With Me. Which is, if you ask me, the Muzak cover's way better than the original.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  So not to be confused with Weezer's Blue Album.

• 52:17Josh Clark?

  No, it's a little different. And then if you're like, oh, this Muzak's floating my boat, go start looking up Ronnie Aldrich, Frank Checkfield, Montevani,

• 52:29Josh Clark?

  and just start there.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and if eventually you're like, I'm feeling really goosey, how about some actual vocalists going on? And then you'll just go right into Josh's other favorite, which is yacht rock, easy listening.

• 52:42Josh Clark?

  I like yacht rock a lot, too. I'm super right now into west coast cool jazz. Stan Getz, Chet Baker.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:52Josh Clark?

  Oh, I can't remember, I can't remember his name, but I just got into him. He's a great jazz pianist from that era. Bill Evans, the Bill Evans Trio.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Oh, love Bill Evans. You're just getting into Bill Evans?

• 53:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I just, just started getting into. I started with Chet Baker and just started working my way out.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Vince Guaraldi is another great one. I know he's known for the Charlie Brown stuff, but all of Vince Guaraldi is great.

• 53:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he is. You can tell just by the Charlie Brown album that he's an amazing jazz guy.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Good stuff.

• 53:19Josh Clark?

  So, Chuck, I have one more thing. There is, you know, people hate Muzak a lot. So there's some artists who have like tried to, a lot of artists have tried to make hay out of the whole thing. But one guy, David Shaffer, had something from back in 2000 or 2002, something. He had X10R dot one and X10R dot two. These two CDs that he released, they were basically his- Weird, unnerving remixes of Muzak. That just turns the whole thing on its head, so much so that like you may laugh out loud when you first hear them. And I believe they're on his website. But it's like a, it's like Muzak, but what you would hear in your nightmares.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 54:05Josh Clark?

  It's really good. And I believe he's got it on his website to go listen to, and I think you can buy the CDs too. So, check that out.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  I'll check it out.

• 54:12Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, if you want to know more about Muzak, just start listening and loving. Just, just don't prejudge. How about that?

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Great.

• 54:20Josh Clark?

  And since I said, "Don't prejudge everybody," that means it's time for listener mail.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  I'm gonna call this from Lauren. "Hey guys, a man walks down the street and says, 'Why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard.'" Oh, wait a minute. Sorry.

• 54:36Josh Clark?

  What a perfect email for this one.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  I was reading my forearm tattoo by accident. "Hey guys, been listening to stuff you should know for a few years. I often turn up the volume and play an episode while I cook dinner. My seven-year-old daughter, Lila, used to complain, 'Oh, you're listening to this again?'" But I recently caught her singing the beat to the intro music.

• 54:56Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  And she'll casually mention things she's heard from time to time. I suspect she's fond of the animal episodes. "Anyway, you'll jokingly sometimes say, 'Jerry, will you have to edit that, you're gonna have to edit that part out.'" And it has me curious, how often things are cut from an episode and why? Bad jokes? Too long? Have you ever had to completely redo one? I think it'd be really interesting to know, and I bet Lila would find it encouraging, since she likes to make videos of herself singing and dancing. For the record, y'all make it effortless and seem effortless, and it's always a joy to listen to. That is Lauren from Montevallo, Alabama.

• 55:32Josh Clark?

  I'll bet that's not how you say that.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Montevallo? Yeah, you're probably right.

• 55:36Josh Clark?

  You put a little too much mustard on there.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  She says, "P.S. How cool of a mom would I be if my daughter heard our names on the podcast?"

• 55:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, cool mom.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  So, there you go, Lauren and Lila. The answer is...

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Very little gets edited out.

• 55:49Josh Clark?

  Just the singing and dancing.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  Like that siren in the background?

• 55:53Josh Clark?

  We'll probably just leave that in to prove a point.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  No, we don't edit a lot out. Occasionally, like we found out, and we've said this before early on, we left in the word stumbles and the ums and the uhs and just because it's a conversation and we didn't want to make it seem too scripted because it's not, or canned because it's not. And so we just left that stuff in there. And the only time, like, I can think today, you had to look something up real quick, but that doesn't happen much.

• 56:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I had to poke my head out of the studio and look at my record collection to come up with Bill Evans' name.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  So, I mean, that's gone now, but very little is edited out, especially after this many years. We're not one take wonders, but it's, Cherry doesn't have the hardest job in the world, you know?

• 56:38Josh Clark?

  We've taken it easy on her for years.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's about it, Chuck. I can't think of anything else we really edited out.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  But that's not to say that shows that are heavily edited and very scripty and slick, like, there's room for those, too.

• 56:54Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  We're not the only way to do it.

• 56:56Josh Clark?

  No, we're like the Muzak of podcasts. There's other people who are all like the Ted Nugent of podcasts, and there's room for both.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Roman Marsh, the Ted Nugent of podcasting.

• 57:05Josh Clark?

  That's right, man. That guy's always wearing like a studded leather wristband and stuff.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  I keep waiting on Roman to text me and being like, you guys are consistently talking smack about me.

• 57:15Josh Clark?

  He doesn't, he doesn't listen, and no one he knows listens.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Listens? Oh, that's impossible.

• 57:21Josh Clark?

  So who is that? Lila and Lauren?

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 57:25Josh Clark?

  Nice. Well, thank you very much for writing in. Hope we answered your question. And if you want to get in touch with us like Lila and Lauren did, you can send us an email. Send it off to [email protected].

• 57:42Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 57:58Josh Clark?

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