’m well acquainted with neighborly tolerance. I grew up in London, in a townhouse à la Mary Poppins that shared paper-thin walls with a surprisingly rowdy 80-year-old couple and a girl mysteriously compelled to practice piano at 2 a.m. every morning. 

I have since learned to deal with background noise, but even I have my limits. Limits which are currently being tested by the womp-womp of a Skrillex remix that the aspiring DJ next door prefers.

A large part of me wants to say that noise limits are for squares, but it’s constantly overpowered by my inner rule-follower. While I try to keep the pumping bass of the Spotify playlist “Teen Party” to a modest level, others are not quite as sensitive. 

If silence is golden, the noise emanating from my floor is decidedly tin. But where volume can be remedied by an investment in Beats by Dr. Dre, content cannot. These were the thoughts going through my mind as “Chase Us Around” played on a loop for three days straight.

When it comes to music, I like to think that I have an open mind. My chunky blue iPod nano has seen it all, from the period of my life when the Beach Boys and the Beatles dominated shuffle, to the Ramones phase of my pre-teen years, to the discovery of Girl Talk. I generally classify myself as falling into the “everything but country” category of music lover, and for that I am sorry, Luke Bryan. 

But living between the thin walls of a dorm room, my mind has expanded past the size of my iTunes library. All music was not created equal, but all opinions are. While I did not sign up to live next to a mid-level Ibiza club, I can definitely make the best of it. To misquote the infamous musician Lil Jon, “turn down for Amy trying to sleep.”