Top Five Records

Should you find yourself wanting to hang yourself with the tied together pages of the latest installment in the ever-present flow of essays coming from your printer, I would like to suggest to you the salvific qualities of the angry pop playlist. Writing about the modern dilemma of the Midwestern novel when you would rather be sleeping or watching reruns of America's Next Top Model can be harrowing to even the strongest of homework warriors, but there is help. As is so often the case, music is the answer. As is almost never the case, the needed music is pop.

The more mind numbing the lyric and driving the base line, the more likely it is that a particular piece of music will give you the angry adrenaline needed to get through the hurdle. Whereas in the peace and calm of the Bodleian Library last semester I found such pieces as Benjamin Britten's Winterreise a helpful soundtrack to my work, things have, unfortunately, changed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. I present to you the soundtrack to my desperation. What's yours?

1. American Woman, Lenny Kravitz
2. Fighter, Christina Aguilera
3. Whole in My Head, The Dixie Chicks
4. Through With You (I like to think of my P.E. classes with this one), Maroon 5
5. What Was I Thinking, Dirks Bently (with a name like Dirks, it has to be good)