Lauren Dragan

All these years I've been reviewing headphones, and I thought the point was how they sounded. How wrong I was. Stockholm company Happy Plugs has re-educated me on the definition of earbud. According to their philosophy, headphones are "the most contemporary fashion detail of them all."

All other headphones bow to these. All other headphones are NOTHING compared to these. These are, to put it simply, a collection of the greatest headphones on Earth.

One of them even looks like bacon.

Have you ever listened to a pair of headphones and thought that it seems as though the music was being performed right in front of you? Or maybe you’re in a public place, listening to music as you walk, and all the day to day mundanity around you takes on a more profound glow? Or sometimes, if you pay attention, it seems as though events are lining up to the rhythm: someone is walking to the beat, or speaking at just the right moment? Now imagine that all of those things were happening at the same time and you’ll have a small idea of what it was like to attend Invisible Cities, an opera composed for headphones and performed live at a functioning, bustling train station.

Dear Manufacturers of Headphones,
As a headphone tech reviewer and avid consumer for several years now, I’ve gotten a chance to witness great triumph and tragedy in headphone design and functionality. We’ve come such a long way from the giant forever-alone-in-my-room over-ears of the ‘70s or the foam-and-plastic-electro-shock-hazards from the walkman fueled ‘80s. But there is always room for improvement. I know it, my readers sure know it, and they let me know about it. So I wanted you, dear Headphone Companies, to know it too. Here are some features that seem really obvious, but are sorely lacking in the marketplace. If you could see it in your hearts to add them to products that also sound really great, well, we’ll all just throw our money at you. Promise.