After months of Phil Collins, Five For Fighting, Amanda Marshall and other aural equivalents to being drowned in glucose-fructose, I wrote the following polite email to the Lite-Rock radio station. It will change nothing, but it made me feel better:

My workplace plays Q92. I find your songs formulaic and bland, musically and narratively. Your playlist does not ease the crushing monotony of the workplace, it reinforces it.

I imagine you feel you are 'giving the people what they want'. This ignores the fact that alternative forms of your genre are ignored in favour of slick, corporate market-boosters.

I understand people need 'soft rock' sometimes, like they need hard rock, jazz and hip hop other times. I'm just pleading for a broadening of your musical mandate. Bands like Broken Social Scene, Belle & Sebastian and Manitoba create music that's pleasant, inoffensive and hummable. Surely Jean Coutu would not cancel their advertising if you put on "Anthem for a 17 year old girl" rather than "One More Night"?

Please. I'm begging you. My brain is turning to mush. Put Lionel Richie in the dustbin of history where he belongs.