Friday Pandora 11

It's one more Pandora than 10!

This week I’m turning control of the tunes over to 3B Radio, the official Pandora station of Three Bulls (America’s most trusted name in half-assed blogging™). The idea was to make a station that would be full of love and hate, tunes you can’t live without, tunes you’re ashamed to admit liking, and tunes that you would start a jihad against. Here’s what I entered in my five categories.

1) A song you love but you KNOW is definitely not for everyone: “Heat of the Moment,” Asia
When The Lovely Becky and I went to see The 40-Year-Old Virgin, we were the only people in the movie theater to laugh at the two Asia jokes. Made me feel as old as the time I talked to someone who didn’t know who Kip Winger was.

2) A song you are embarrassed about loving so you will roll up the car window when it comes on: “That’s What You Get,” Paramore
This is Rock Band-sponsored shame. I’m covering my face with my hands right now.

3) A song that you have a hate relationship with, meaning a song you are familiar with and CANNOT stand: “Personal Jesus,” Depeche Mode
The worst song from a band I cannot stand.

4) A song that do NOT like from a band you DO like: “The Crunge,” Led Zeppelin
The only way this song makes sense is if Zeppelin intended it as a joke. “Let’s fart out a terrible song on an otherwise classic album and see what happens.”

5) A song that you love so much you would nutpunch someone for denigrating it: “You Make My Dreams” Hall & Oates
I cannot have a bad day when I hear this.

6) A song that you know is completely overplayed but you still love and can listen to over and over again anyway: “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Queen
You know how some people love The Rocky Horror Picture Show and want to sing all the songs a zillion times? Well, I hate that movie more than The Goonies. But “Bohemian Rhapsody” is my Rocky Horror. I never get tired of hearing or singing it.

After a couple dozen entries like that, here’s what Pandora cranked out for me today:

1) “Untouchable,” Taylor Swift. Here’s the difference between young love and old love: economy. When you’re young and in love, you can take a few minutes to say the same thing over and over and over again, because it’s just you and the person you’re interested in. Old love doesn’t have time for that. There’s kids to feed and jobs to work and shit to do. Old love wonders why you just didn’t stop at the first chorus because, really, you said everything you needed to say. That’s much more efficient, and even better, it’s more appreciated, because old love knows about the kids and work and shit and is grateful that you stopped what you were doing to say I love you.

2) “Stop and Stare,” OneRepublic. I am stopping and staring at the lack of a space in the band name. Why? It triggers the MS Word spell check and sticks a little red line beneath the name. Although that’s the most creative thing about this lukewarm cup of coffeehouse pop.

3) “All-American Girl,” Carrie Underwood. I would completely gloss over this except that it’s about a) having a kid and b) about a father who wants a son but has a daughter and he becomes enraptured with her. I wish part A was as easy as Ms. Underwood makes it out to be, but in our case it was more like “Experiments in the Phantasmal Realm of Procreation (Infertility Opus Pts. I-XXII)” by Dream Theater. As for B, when you go through a Dream Theater song like that, you’re just happy that you wind up with anything that can hug you and doesn’t have leathery bat wings.

4) “Party in the U.S.A.,” Miley Cyrus. I would have made Hannah Montana about an all-American girl who has a secret life in a death metal band called Succubus. I’m also pretty sure this song would give lab rats cancer.

5) “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” Guns N’ Roses. Now we’re cooking with heroin! Even if I don’t physically do the Axl shimmy, I mentally do it every time I hear this song. I also can’t tell if Pandora is making a subtle joke about Hannah Montana, thereby showing AI self-awareness. If it starts singing “Daisy” or asking if I’d like to play Global Thermonuclear War, I’m pulling the plug.

6) “You Really Got Me,” Van Halen. Daddy’s little girl has apparently grown up, created a time machine, and started hanging out at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go.

7) “Paranoid,” Black Sabbath. I have to admit, it’s the pure schizophrenia of 3B Radio that is making me a fan. Much like the Axl shimmy, this one always makes me mentally do the Ozzy head shake, that awkward little headbang motion he would do when he was waiting for Tommy Iommi to finish his solo. Of course, now Ozzy can’t stop doing that shake.

8) “Don’t Need Nothing But a Good Time,” Poison. Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. So awful, and yet I’ve always been kind of drawn to its awfulness like a mosquito to a bug light.

9) “Tennessee Flat Top Box,” Johnny Cash. Here’s a good litmus test for whether a song has any redemptive value: would it not suck if Johnny Cash sang it? You could probably hand him, “Don’t Need Nothing But a Good Time,” and he could turn it into a cautionary tale about a life full of shallow sexual encounters, substance abuse, and rootless existence. But even he couldn’t save “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”

10) “I Won’t Give Up My Train,” Merle Haggard. This requires a dog to drink with. Sadly, I only have two cats.

11) “Workin’ on a Groovy Thing,” The 5th Dimension. Not my cup of Joe (needs more drum solo), but groovy enough to end today’s list.

So there you go. Surprisingly not completely awful. Have a good weekend.