I also have a big love of classical music played on piano because this is the environment I grew up in my brother being one of the great masters in this world.
For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence.
Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.
I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.