Author Archives: Vivian Law

My interest in music developed from a young age. I enjoyed playing musical instruments and getting a Walkman with headphones was the coolest thing ever. I did have the sense from even that young age it was obnoxious to blare music in settings where it may disturb others. Speakers on the beach is not okay when others are within hearing range, especially with the vast amount of nonsense produced and consumed. Music has the capability to influence our mood and shapes perception of our surroundings. There’s music piped in at the grocery store!

I understand that Spotify playlists are popular and used by many. I stand for human curated music and I’m not a fan of algorithm driven music selection. Any music you hear at a class with me is specifically chosen by me on Apple Music (@vivian_law). I’m a music aficionado and I get inspiration from other humans, not algorithms. The autoplay feature on Spotify has yielded maybe one song out of a hundred that I enjoyed, so it is not a feature I appreciate at all- in fact it feels like force fed mediocrity. The Release Radar is something I give a listen and works a lot better for me than autoplay.

With exposure to more genres of music in my teenage years I found myself offended by vulgar lyrics. Friends who have known me since then were subjected to my pontification on ill effects of listening to such nonsense. I sounded like an old person back then and now that I am an older person, my sensibilities have not changed at all! No degrading lyrics are played at my cycling classes. We take requests and the policy is each rap song is matched with a country song.

Music is a form of subliminal messaging that we choose to expose ourselves to- so I recommend that we all be mindful to what messages we might receive in what we listen to and allow children to be exposed to.