Pandora

Pandora radio hates me. I am not saying that lightly; I have been carefully cultivating my stations for years now, and Pandora is still messing with my head.


If you don’t listen to Pandora, you probably listen to something like it: Spotify, or I Heart Radio or some other place on the internet where you go, type in your favorite artists or songs, and then get a nice customized music selection for free. In theory.

In reality, as I noted above, Pandora hates me. I tell Pandora that I want a station that plays Goodie Mob and OutKast, and Pandora, basically says to me, “I don’t think you really mean that.” It then proceeds to play “Lady” by Kenny Rogers in every possible formulation. First, it plays “Lady,” from Kenny’s album Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits. I give it a thumbs down, meaning, “Dear Pandora, that’s not what I meant, and please do not ever do that to me again.” Fine. Two songs later, I kid you not, Pandora plays, “Lady,” by Kenny Rogers. This time, it’s the live version. Thumbs down, Pandora! An hour later, I get the saxophone version of Kenny Rogers’ “Lady,” as played by Kenny G. This time, when I try to give it a thumbs-down, Pandora is quicker than me. “I’m sorry,” a banner at the top of my computer reads, “You have exceeded the number of songs you may skip in this hour. Enjoy ‘Lady,’ sucker! You know you love it!” and it continues to play every variation of the song “Lady” known to man.

Later on, as I’m listening to Norah Jones’s version of “Lady,” for the tenth time, (did you know that Lionel Richie wrote this song? Lionel Richie is so rich, y’all!) I wonder, does Pandora know something about me that I don’t know about myself? After all, Pandora is the brainchild of the Music Genome Project, which, according to Wikipedia, was designed to "capture the essence of music at the fundamental level, using almost 400 attributes to describe songs and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them.” It has the word Genome in it, so it must be scientific, right? I wrack my brains, trying to think of some reason why Pandora has put me in this Lady hole. Is it because I liked a Barry Manilow song once? It wasn’t Mandy. It was Weekend in New England, which is a really lovely song. Was it because I have a show tunes station? Because I like bluegrass? Does my Miles Davis station count for nothing, Pandora? Does my longstanding devotion to Todd Rundgren do nothing to ease your concern that I’m not ready for a little Atlanta-based hip hop? I think I can take it, Pandora. I really do.

And I guess that’s the bottom line: I’m not mad at Pandora for not getting it right; I’m sad because I think that maybe Pandora thinks I suck. Pandora has gotten it in its head that it knows better than me, and that I am, somehow, not ready to hear the songs that I want. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to get Pandora to play “Paper Bag” by Fiona Apple, and how many times it INSISTS on playing everything by Natalie Imbruglia instead. In this contest of wills, Pandora just wants me to give up, and give in to the seductive calls of Michael Bublé, Coldplay, and Kenny Rogers – the things it thinks I need. But what Pandora doesn’t know is that I’ll never give in. You can throw “Lady” at me ten different ways, but I will always find a way to give it the thumbs-down. You’re not going to win this one, Pandora.