Sounds Of The Season: Happy Musical Accidents

This is the season when many people listen only to Christmas music. While there are many holiday tunes that I love, I haven't quite gotten in the Christmas spirit just yet.

So yesterday, I was listening to music that's quite different from the sounds of the season: the top 10 countdown of the most popular current heavy metal songs on 99.7 FM "The Blitz," the local rock station in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

While some hard rocker was screeching out an aggressive, fist-pumping anthem, my hand accidentally grazed the radio dial on my MP3 player and the tuner landed on the local lite rock station. The eardrum-shattering death metal was hilariously replaced by the cheerful sounds of Alvin and the Chipmunks chirping out a Christmas carol. Talk about contrast!

In another musical coincidence earlier this week, I was listening to Prince. Although I've been a huge fan since Purple Rain, I haven't really been listening much to his music lately other than reviewing his new album, Art Official Age. But Tuesday while I was writing a piece for a local paper, I felt the urge to reconnect with The Purple One and pulled up his greatest hits on my MP3 player.

My connection with Prince must be pretty strong, because while I was attempting to type "city of Columbus" into Google to access my local government's website, "city of Minneapolis" popped up instead! Interesting coincidence...