Could you turn it down, please?

Restaurant music is out of control. Someone had to say something.

That lampshade is wonky (Credit: Henry Moss)

You know how it is. You really don’t want to be that guy. Come on now, you’re in public, an image of urban anonymity, you could be anyone tonight. An unflappable companion to your spouse, a charming stranger to the waitress, an adventurous, blithesome, verging on the… COULD YOU TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN PLEASE I CAN BARELY HEAR MYSELF THINK. THANK YOU.

Hi. This was me on Saturday.

As I sat down at the local pizzeria, my forehead instantly began to contort. That sound. Cloying, preposterously folksy, presumably Italian music emanating from a set of speakers that, like a rotary hammer, can still be felt long after you are gone. You don’t so much hear it as experience it spatially. You look at each other. Should we just leave?

But you’re hungry. It’s 8pm and lunch is a distant memory. Imperceptibly, you shrug those pathetic shoulders and meditate over your personal shortcomings. That over-reliance on noise-cancelling headphones. Or the fact that you never play any music at home on loud, even when hosting a dinner party. I think it might be a class thing. Like removing the Viennetta from the freezer and casually declaring to Bob and Barbara: “You know what? I just don’t trust that Neil Kinnock.”

In a better world, noise pollution would be the moral panic of our age. Think strangers holding phone calls on the 16.52 to Guildford for the benefit of the entire carriage. This post comes to mind:

Though a shared space, a restaurant isn’t a commuter train or a library. The manager has every right to play music to whatever volume they desire. But it comes at a cost.

The science bit

Consider the slew of contributing factors to this trend of rising restaurant decibels. Open kitchens, stripped down surfaces, high ceilings and even higher-density seating. Meanwhile, the unconscious human response is to speak louder, a phenomenon called the Lombard effect. This generates that bustling atmosphere owners — and to be fair, patrons — often crave.

There are also financial incentives: various studies have shown that louder sound levels encourage people to drink more and eat faster, ideal for table turnover. Of course, the pizzeria in question was practically empty, I imagine on account of the fact that the pizza was floppy and the bowl of pasta with prawns and chilli cost double 2018 prices.