The reason for this trends is significantly easier to answer than you think, Amanda: noise.
That 35 years from 1981 introduced noise everywhere: the streets are crowded are noisy; the cubicles are gone, so our open-space trendy workplaces are noisy; malls and shopping centres play different noise in each and every shop.
Listening to your choice of noise at least suppressed the crushing reality of harsh sounds.
(Oh, by the way: this entry was written by Peter Molnar, and originally posted on petermolnar dot net.)
