Tag: Apple Music

Tripping Up AI with Apple Music and YouTube

It Knows What Tunes I Like. Or Does It?

Many of us who work from home, or are home most of the day, spend a lot of time listening to music. We all have our music apps of choice. For the most part, I use Apple Music and YouTube. I have more albums and homemade playlists on Apple than I can count.

Those of you who have read my posts know I favor ’80s new wave and goth tunes, with classic rock and a few other things mixed in. The mixed-in includes some disco. Yeah, I remember the Disco Sucks pins in the 70s. A lot of it does suck. But not all. Classical, opera, and theater music are also in heavy rotation. Country has never been, and never will be, mixed in.

Other than when I go to sleep, all my music is from the digital platforms. Bedtime is from my CD player. Yeah, they still exist and sound fine. I often let Apple Music or YouTube make a mix. It almost always has mixes I can click on as soon as I log in.

AI creates the setlist. It knows what bands I listen to most often, as well as the songs from those bands. It is not unusual for the lists to be heavy on Bauhaus, Bowie, the Beatles, the

Cure, Erasure, Echo & the Bunnymen, Elton John, Depeche Mode, Love & Rockets, the Ramones, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and a few other bands. You get the picture. I am sure you can pick the rest. Feel free to enter your comments in the chat section.

For the most part, my AI music lists are spot on. But I trip it up. It’s not hard. I often add stuff like ABBA, the Bee Gees, Jackson Browne, “La Bohème,” the Village People, and “Tosca.” Feel free to guess some of the others. You’d be right if you picked Prince, Led Zep, and the Who. All are heavily in the rotation.

Apple often says, “Mitchell’s Mix.” It adds a hyphen and says light, rocking, chill, etc. For the most part, it does a decent job. I guess it is learning my tastes. Occasionally it adds the Grateful Dead. When that happens, I immediately exit the list. I have never listened to them and never will. 

AI is doing a great job with my playlists. However, like all of us, it is still learning. I think it’ll get there. But who knows what I will pop in to confuse it?

Nostalgia

How Music is the Driving Force 

Over the last few weeks, I saw performances by Paul Simon at Forest Hills Tennis, Bon Jovi at the Garden and Joe Jackson at the Beacon. Future shows include Squeeze at Radio City Music Hall, David Byrne at Forest Hills Tennis, Sting at Brooklyn Paramount and Belinda Carlisle at Palladium Times Square. I hope to see more. I do have a few Yankees-Red Sox games on tap.

Bon Jovi at MSG

All brought back memories. Or, as my mom said, nostalgia. Bon Jovi’s on-stage commentary put it best. He said, let’s party like it’s 1999. We all know Prince, whom, sadly, I never saw did that.  Bon Jovi said Let’s go back to 1986. He references when his hair was a little fuller and his jeans were tighter. He continued, saying that all of you listening to me now were much younger back in the day. Probably all in high school and now we’re older.

Bon Jovi

As I listened to him, I was blasted back to my high school job at the Greenridge Plaza McDonald’s and when we closed the store. We all brought cassettes to put into the boombox to blast while we cleaned up. Remember cassettes and boomboxes? We had one of our managers, Uncle Dave, or Disco Dave, with his choices. Others had their choices. We used to fight over what we’d listen to. We heard a wild mix of Bon Jovi, the Cure, David Bowie, Cinderella, Depeche Mode, Genesis, Guns & Roses, Love & Rockets, Madonna, Mötley Crüe, Poison, U2, Van Halen and Wham. I liked most of it. Couldn’t stand and still can’t Cinderella, Mötley Crüe, Poison and Van Halen.  Plenty of other acts made our playlists. They were either on mixed tapes, or albums that we pulled in and out of the boombox. We did not have the luxury of Apple Music.  

Hearing Bon Jovi pushed me back to those days. I had visions of us in our uniforms scrubbing the grills, sweeping and mopping the floors. It made me think of the times we hung out in the parking lot after we closed. In our cars, we played what we wanted. In front of the stores, some of us had beer. Not me. I did nothing. That’s usually the case. 

Paul Simon at Forest Hills Tennis

As for Paul Simon, I wasn’t around for Simon & Garfunkel’s heyday. I did see their reunion tour in the 2000s. I have seen Simon solo a few times and saw Art Garfunkel once at the original City Winery on Varick Street. As Simon played songs from the “Graceland” album, it reminded me of being driven to Scout trips, particularly our winter ski trip—my first- and only-time skiing. I did not do well. 

Joe Jackson at the Beacom

It also reminded me of when I played music all night and kept my sister up in the next room. I made mixes. Most of the new wave and goth bands. But had to include the classic rock tunes. Elton John, Billy Joel, and the Beatles made the cut. Billy Joel was my first concert. I called in sick when I was supposed to close McDonald’s. I got to the former Brendan Byrne Arena with my family. Seated a few rows behind me were several of my coworkers. No one said a word about my illness.

The Cure – “Pornography”

I constantly listen to the Cure. Many times, I flash back to what was perhaps my first date, seeing them with the Pixies and Love & Rockets. We were too young to buy beer. Not that would have as I was driving. We had M&M’s at Giants Stadium. 

All of the other bands mentioned do something similar. People who knew me in college often say they remember my Cure and Depeche Mode posters hanging on my dorm room wall. Sid Vicious hung on my room’s wall at home.

Good music, particularly the best generation of music ever, the 80s, is the driving force of keeping things going.