I often listen to music while I’m working. I really don’t like silence so it provides a background noise and I feel more comfortable. Lately, however, I’ve found myself very distracted by what I am playing.

For a long time I used spotify and had a playlist with lots of well known songs on. The playlist was so familiar that I could just zone out and focus on writing. I stopped using spotify when they introduced the clause that free accounts could only listen to a song 5 times. Since then I’ve been using last fm.

Last fm has been great for suggesting new music to me. I’ve found lots of awesome new songs, composers and bands. For example Cinderella by Steven Curtis Chapman. It actually made me cry the first time I listened to it, and the second time… and every time after.

My biggest problem though is not being able to create an actual playlist on last fm. It has a library of songs that it chooses from, but it’s random, so everytime  new songs play it distracts me as it’s not what I’m expecting or used to coming after the previous song. I also find new or newer songs more distracting. I either want to sing along to them or pick the lyrics apart. In a few cases I even want to rewrite them.

The most distracting song at the moment, however, is Through Heaven’s eyes from the Prince of Egypt soundtrack.