My job requires a pretty good bit of reading, writing, editing, and proofing. In the past, I had great difficulty doing any of those with music going. I love music and tend to sing along many times. The problem is that doesn’t really help my reading, writing, editing, and proofing.

However, since being moved into a cubicle environment in the past month, I’ve started playing music to drown out the office noises that can many times be even more distracting. What I’ve found is that some music makes for productivity and some does not.

While it’s no secret that I love me some Taylor Swift, the lyrical nature of her music distracts me from being productive. So she’s been low on the playlist lately—something my coworkers are likely encouraged by.

So for the past couple of weeks, my go-to music has been that of Gungor. For those not familiar, Gungor is a collective of musicians based in Denver and led by Michael Gungor. Both of their albums have been nominated for Grammy’s and are, in my opinion, the most poetic and creative albums to emerge from the Christian genre in years. I’ve written about their most recent album, Ghosts Upon the Earth, before and can’t recommend it enough. Their previous release, Beautiful Things, is just as spectacular.

One oddity that occurred this week was that once my Gungor music was over, iTunes went to the next album in my queue – Guns N’ Roses’ Greatest Hits. Quite the shift in genre, but what I found was that the GNR music was just as good to work to. The familiar guitar riffs and lack of many understandable lyrics created a nice creative environment. Odd, right?

What music do you play when you are working? Do you have a go-to album or artist?