Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Music Monday Meets Cuteness Tuesday on Wednesday

After having dinner at a friend's last week and being utterly astounded by the consistency of his playlist, he informed me we were listening to the work of internet radio Pandora. You tell Pandora your favorite artist and it will find other music you'll ostensibly like based upon their music genome project.

Game, I entered Feist as my first artist (the first who came to mind. I think because his playlist was super-Feisty). After a half hour or so I was going to pull my hair out if I heard one more quirky, twinkly-voiced girl. Pandora had produced a playlist for me that was indeed very consistent but also incredibly tedious, reflecting just a narrow slice of what I like to listen to. Things got much much better when I took a minute to "add variety" so that Pandora had a better sampling of the breadth of music I like.

After about 10 hours of listening (and giving feedback), adding artists as I thought of them, I'm pretty happy with most things that come up. I do wonder about their licensing however. Though I put in David Bowie, Bryan Ferry Roxy Music, who combined must have hundreds of songs, I've heard only one Bowie tune, yet every time I log in I get at least two Pixies tracks from Surfer Rosa. Mystery.

I've heard this on the radio a couple of times but this came up on my playlist and it struck me as a delightfully perfect pop song, Silver Lining by Rilo Kiley:



I also added Laurie Anderson, and so far have just heard O Superman. I guess this one had the most crossover but it's not my favorite. I really like Smoke Rings because it's completely hilarious but could not find a clip of it to save my life. So here are two more serious but equally wonderful clips, apologies for the crappier than usual quality:

White Lilies



Walking and Falling



Okay, it's neither Monday nor Tuesday but here's a picture that's kinda cute and kinda horrifying. Perhaps it can put your bad day in context:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

maybe you should put in GnR for a little variety/testosterone
lynchb

Professional Critic said...

Yes, Pandora lets you create more than one station, so I should made a rocking station with GnR and The Clash. Back when I was a bagel roller at the Madison Bagel Co, we used to all stand around a huge table rolling the dough listening to The Clash. Then I was rendered obsolete by a machine.