Fun With the New iTunes

So, at the moment I have a very favorable view of Apple, since my computer turned out to still be under warranty and I got a new wireless card for free.  Full of good cheer and in possession of my computer, I thought I'd try out the new version of iTunes, which added a potentially interesting new feature called "Genius".  "Genius" sends Apple an anonymous list of all of your songs and playlists, and then, when you click on an individual song, it creates a new playlist for you based on that song.  I've been playing with it, and the results seem to be pretty decent, albeit predictable and somewhat repetitive (although hopefully that will change when more playlists are added to the Big Brother database).  So, in the spirit of fucking around before I go to sleep, I thought I'd try out five of my favorite songs and see what songs Steve Jobs thinks will complement them.  Even though I've put up unfortunately long lists of songs here before, I'll limit my results to the first five suggestions, as then someone might actually get to the labels at the end of the post.

The Coup- "Me and Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Granada Last Night"

1. Living Legends- "After Hours (Extended Euro Mix)"

2. Brother Ali- "Self Taught" (Great call, but that might be from one of my playlists)

3. The Roots- "Criminal"

4. Little Brother- "Good Clothes"

5. Black Star- "Astronomy (8th Light)

The Hold Steady- "Constructive Summer" (I can't stop listening to this fucking song.  It's awesome and the Hold Steady are becoming one of my favorites.  They're playing in Raleigh in November, on the same day that Murs is playing the Cradle, which is creating an agonizing dilemma for me.)

1. Beck- "Orphans"

2. Wilco- "Impossible Germany"

3. Spoon- "Finer Feelings"

4. Nick Lowe- "I Trained Her To Love Me"

5. Guided By Voices- "I Am A Scientist"

I'm not too impressed by these.  I have plenty of songs by acts like Springsteen and the Clash who have much more in common with The Hold Steady than Wilco or Beck or recent Nick Lowe.  

Bob Dylan- "Shelter From The Storm" (Live version from Hard Rain)

1. The Band- The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"

2. Bruce Springsteen- "Thunder Road"

3. The Rolling Stones- "Midnight Rambler"

4. Warren Zevon- "Lawyers, Guns and Money"

5. David Bowie- "Rebel Rebel"

Again, I'm not blown away here.  It almost seems like they chose five songs upstanding classic rock songs at random to go with Dylan, particularly the final three.  

Otis Redding- "Cigarettes and Coffee"

1. The Marvelettes- "Please Mr. Postman"

2. Aretha Franklin- "Soul Serenade"

3. Sam and Dave- "Hold On! I'm Comin'"

4. The Supremes- "Come See About Me"

5. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes- "If You Don't Know Me By Now"

Oh come on, "Please Mr. Postman"?  You're just choosing R&B and Soul songs at random, aren't you?

Tom Waits- "Clap Hands"

1. The Velvet Underground- "Beginning To See The Light"

2. Neil Young- "Mr. Soul" (Unplugged)

3. Wilco- "Hotel Arizona"

4. Pavement- "Summer Babe [Winter Version]"

5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds- "Red Right Hand"

A little better.  Not sure about the Wilco song here, and I'd have chosen a different Neil song, but we're showing a little bit of improvement.

The most obvious issue for the "Genius" gadget is daring to make the leap from one genre to another within one playlist.  The problem is so ridiculous that when I tried a Howlin' Wolf song, I got a playlist of 25 songs, all of them either Robert Johnson or Howlin' Wolf (which reminds me that I really need to load my other Blues cds onto the computer).  If the music supercomputer can learn how to do that, then this might actually be pretty cool.