Pandora is a sort of customizable radio station that plays songs based on your personal preferences. For example, I told it that I like My Chemical Romance and Pearl Jam, so it assumes that I also enjoy Green Day -- a completely understandable, and entirely erroneous assumption.
You tell Pandora what you like with a simple thumbs up/thumbs down control, which isn't the most precise system. You can give a thumbs up to Def Leppard's "Armageddon It" and give a thumbs down to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll," but there's no way to say, "Yeah, this Counting Crows song is ok, but I don't really need to hear any more in the next 3 hours."
The other problem is that Pandora only allows you to skip so many songs. That means you have to use your skips wisely, because if you skip some dull but tolerable Goo Goo Dolls song, you may end up having to listen to all 4 hours and 26 minutes of John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane."
The result of my reluctance to either skip or "thumbs-down" bland, inoffensive songs is that recently I've been listening to an ungodly amount of Genesis. I haven't "thumbs-upped" any Genesis songs, but I can't bring myself to "thumbs-down" them either. I mean, what Genesis song would I give a thumbs down to? How do you pick? It's like having to randomly pick one puppy out of a litter to drown in the river. They're all cute and fuzzy, and equally capable of entertaining me for three minutes.
Because of my failure to take decisive action in this matter, Pandora has decided that I am the biggest closet Genesis fan on the planet. "It's ok," Pandora whispers to me, as the synthesized chords of "Abacab" commence. "I understand. There is no need to speak of your forbidden love."
Compounding the problem, Pandora seems to be programmed to play several songs in a particular genre in a row, so that a Genesis song is often followed up with three or four songs from the combined catalogs of Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins and Mike + the Mechanics. Sometimes I get the impression that Pandora is just showing off. Yes, Pandora, we're all terribly impressed that you know that Mike Rutherford was the bassist for Genesis. Now play some freaking Whitesnake before I slip into a coma, would you?
My suspicion that Pandora is screwing with me is reinforced by the fact that not once has it ever played "In the Air Tonight." I mean, if there's one song that I'm secretly hoping to hear at the end of a Genesis-themed medley, it's "In the Air Tonight." The first thought that pops into anyone's head at the beginning of any Phil Collins song other than "In the Air Tonight," is "Damn, it's too bad they didn't play 'In the Air Tonight.' That song is freaking SWEET.' Plus, I can totally air-drum to it."
But I know the reason why you keep this silence upNor has it ever played Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer." What is up with that? It's played other songs from So, but never that one. Look, I'm not saying "Sledgehammer" is the best Peter Gabriel song ever.
No you don't fool me
The hurt doesn't show
but the pain still grows
It's no stranger to you and me
duh-DOO duh-DOO duh-DOO duh-DOO-DOO-DOO!
Actually, yes I am. "Sledgehammer" is the best Peter Gabriel song ever. What do I have to do to get it to play? If I thumbs up other Peter Gabriel songs, it will think it was right all along in spurning "Sledgehammer." If I give them the thumbs down, it might stop playing Peter Gabriel altogether. So I'm stuck paging through the songs it's already played, trying to find something else that sounds like "Sledgehammer" so I can thumbs up it. Or alternately, I need to find a song that's diametrically opposed to "Sledgehammer" and thumbs down it. That's an interesting theoretical question. What's the opposite of "Sledgehammer?" I think it's Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine," but I could be wrong.
I eventually did figure out that you can specify particular songs that you like as well as artists. I put in "Sledgehammer," and the next song that played was "You Can Call Me Al," by Paul Simon. I wouldn't call that a five-point match, but it's in the ballpark. So then I put in "Urgent" by Foreigner, and it came up with the Tubes' "She's a Beauty." I can't argue with that either.
There's still the problem of genre overkill though. For example, I just sat through a 20 minute 80s hair band mix featuring Van Halen, the Scorpions, Poison, Bon Jovi, and then Van Halen again. I love spandex rock as much as the next child of the 80s, but at some point enough is enough. Pandora really needs to have some kind of safe word that you can use to tell it that things have gotten out of hand. Something intuitive and easy to remember, like "Nirvana."
Ah, and now we're back to "Easy Lover," by Phil Collins featuring Phil Bailey.
Pandora knows me so well.
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Labels: Music
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