What’s your musical poison? The songs or symphonies that make you shudder with displeasure? Whether it’s K-Pop, Bruckner, Barry Manilow or Be-bop that you consider to be an assault on your ears, I strongly advise that a little of what you think you cannot stand, does you good. Try listening to more music you don’t like, and your horizons will expand as the algorithmic shackles of your listening life are thrown off. Trust me, I play music on the radio for a living, and it worked for me. 

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The morning after the news of Dolly Parton’s death broke, I was presenting Essential Classics on BBC Radio 3, where the playlist is entirely classical every weekday. We played Parton’s ‘Love Is Like a Butterfly’, a feather-light slice of folk-inflected beauty to mark her passing. I watched emails arriving in the programme’s inbox as the song played and I did worry that I was about to get an anti-Parton onslaught. Instead, there was an influx of communications from classical music lovers who wanted to express just how special a musician they thought Dolly was.  

But this set me thinking about how........

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