The Great Music Categorization Initiative

pandora

One of the best things to come into my life this year is Pandora One. It meets all my needs: Familiar music with occasional interspersals of new things I might like; the ability to span genres and decades; the serendipitous reconnection with old favorites I haven’t heard for years. I have several stations that I’ve worked hard to customize, with my current favorite being one titled Driven Home that basically exists to make my hourlong commute at the end of the day more bearable.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Music Genome Project almost since it began, and Days of Internet Radio Yore, I tried everything from Launchcast Plus to Spotify to Slacker. They all make their suggestions similarly, and I’m generally happy with them.

However.

As someone who is at least as interested in the lyrics as the music itself, I wish someone would invent a topical categorization option for music based on lyrics. I don’t mean “breakup songs” or “falling in love songs” or “angsty emo songs.” I mean songs about any number of emotions based on a particular concrete theme.

I offer this starting list with dinky Youtube playlists by way of example, based solely on music I’ve heard in the past two weeks via either my own (fairly small) collection of mp3s or Pandora One. If anyone steals this idea and makes it a reality, all I ask is a free lifetime subscription, thankyouverymuch.

Celestial Bodies

Desdemona’s Building a Rocket Ship by Jimmy Buffett
Cecilia and the Satellite by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Satellite by Dave Matthews Band
Synesthesia by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Starlight by Muse