Wednesday, September 3, 2008

What Would Pandora Play?

I have been educating myself over at the school of Pandora. I am an appreciative student, having had virtually no education in popular culture and its varieties of music for the years spanning 0 to 1989 and 1992 to 2008.

Yet I'm not sure I approve. Really, the Music Genome Project is to music as lepidoptery is to butterflies.

I type in "Cesaria Evora" and get an entire channel of music sung in nothing but Portuguese; I was looking for music that makes me feel wild with longing for something that's slipping from my fingers, a feeling which is not stirred in me by the Portuguese language in particular.

Or say I want a channel called "Music That Makes Me Weep." Pandora doesn't give me that option. I have to settle for songs with "mellow rock instrumentation," "subtle use of vocal harmony," "use of a string ensemble," "prominent organ" ... wait, that's not what I had in mind. (Pandora has not heard of double entendres, apparently.)

In theory, I despise the MGP for sucking the soul out of music, but I still listen to my Pandora channels. "What will they think of next?"

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