Genius Shenanigans – The Blue Star of T.A.T.U. and Destruction

I hope that everyone who celebrates had a wonderful Christmas this year, and I hope that those who celebrate Chanukah (why is this not in Google’s spell checker?) continue to enjoy it for the next few days. I, meanwhile, have had a major upheaval in my life to which I’m currently adjusting. Unfortunately for me, I’m a slow adjuster when it comes to these things. I recently found myself in a situation wherein I was having difficulty falling asleep. I turned to my trusty iTunes and stereo to carry me off to slumber land. Since I hadn’t really tooled around with it for a while, I decided to let Genius setup my night time playlist.

Richie Kotzen, the former bassist of the rock group Poison, is a big anime fan and a fairly popular musician in Japan. A few years ago he recorded an entire album of English covers and re-interpretations of various songs from the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. For those who are anal retentive, the songs are all from the Universal Century series, none of the alternate continuities. I came across a short-lived posting of a song on YouTube, proceeded to download the entire album, and then found myself dropping $50 to import the whole thing. I love it, although I know it can only really be appreciated by a fanboy and not necessarily by someone who simply loves music. My favorite track is the opening track and cover of the second opening theme of Z Gundam, my favorite series. It’s called “Blue Star”, and it’s basically just a soft rock love ballad.

Since this is a soft song that I figure could help me off into slumber land, I figured it would be the perfect basis for the entire playlist – assuming Apple has become more competent with its Genius concoctions. I don’t have to explain the adage about making assumptions. The results were as follows:

I can understand maybe The Pillows and Genki Rockets having songs listed there because those are both Japanese groups. I might be able to understand Motley Crue, Tears for Fears, and David Bowie for their 80′s connection. If I were pushed, I might even almost except T.A.T.U. because many anime fans are (not so) secretly lolicon. But the rest – with the exception of “Go Beyond the Time”, the other Z Gundam opening – I’m hard pressed to understand. It probably shows that users are still better off making their own personal playlists rather than relying on Apple to help them make good decisions. It would still be nice to have something worthwhile, though, especially considering the fact that the current state of my music library is 20+ days of music.

"If dysfunction is our function, then I must be some kind of genius!"

In early September, Apple released iTunes 8, the latest version of the program most people know to be “that program that updates my iPod”, to an unsuspecting populace. If any of you are like I am, then you simply download these updates without questioning what’s new, what’s changed, and what’s improved. I had an idea of what to look for this time around thanks to my having seen my brother’s install. I was interested in seeing my albums arranged in a grid format.

When setting up everything, it asked me if I’d like to enable the Genius feature. Not having a clue about that, I was inclined to say “NO”. It seems natural, especially when it says it needs to share information with some database. At this point in time, almost everyone has illegally obtained music on at least one computer. Why risk putting yourself out there? The possibilities opened by Genius were too much to turn down. This feature recommends music I don’t already have (comparing one song at a time to their database) and also creates playlists for me based on a single chosen track. I’m not sure if people have figured out exactly how it determines song associations other than the attachment to the iTunes Store. Being lazy about creating my own playlists and continually curious about what associations may be within music I have, I jumped at the chance to use Genius.

There’s an initial time sink in letting the program scan your library, but that’s only painful if you have a ton of music on your computer. It did not take long to scan my laptop, but I basically had to walk away when I let it scan my desktop. I currently have just over 40GB of music on my desktop. It used to be more, but I’m constantly clearing out the crap I no longer want. Some people are turned off by the fact that they have to wait to use the program, but it’s not so bad.

However, using the feature sometimes yields odd results. For playlists that make a bit more sense, you might want to have a large library for it to sort through. When I initially tried the program out, I decided a playlist based on one of my favorite Matthew Sweet tracks, “Looking at the Sun”, would be a good start. I refreshed the playlist three times in disbelief because it repeatedly included “Wish” by Nine Inch Nails. Very different music styles that don’t belong in any sanely plotted playlist. I love both songs, but they don’t fit together nicely. With the greater depth provided by my desktop, I haven’t seen this combination again.

Right now I’m playing around with the fact that I have quite a bit of Japanese music on my computer. I enjoy a bit of Japanese rock, or J-rock. Very few of these tracks have any sort of association through Genius and the iTunes store. I didn’t notice this at first because my current favorite J-rock song is L’Arc~en~Ciel’s “Daybreak’s Bell”. I don’t think this track has been released in America yet, and in fact the associated television series, Gundam 00, is still getting prepped for its airing on the SciFi Channel this November. I didn’t pay attention to the recommended buys for it but instead jumped right into making a playlist. The original one has been edited, so I made a new one recently to share.

There are a few things I find odd about that playlist, but particularly I have to focus on the inclusion of t.A.T.u., not once but twice. Granted, one song is called “Gomenasai”, which is obviously a Japanese word, but why “30 Minutes”? What happens if I refresh?

“Gomenasai” again? “Malchik Gay”? Is iTunes just grouping together everything that’s foreign? I think someone on a random blog suggested that this is iTunes sharing associations created by other users of iTunes. Somewhere out there may be people purposely putting together J-rock with faux lesbian pop music. I shouldn’t be surprised considering the fact that there are many anime fans who are too ashamed to announce they “lolicon”, or have a Lolita complex.

Don’t look at me that way. I have t.A.T.u. on my computer because they song “All the Things She Said” got stuck in my head years ago, and I sometimes enjoy music that is so simplistic that it requires very little mental power to comprehend. Can you fault me for that?

OK, fault me for the crush on the girl with long hair. We all have our weaknesses.

But this isn’t about me…

I enjoy exploring the playlists produced by Genius. If your taste in music is especially eclectic, I wouldn’t recommend making a playlist and running with it. Always look into it. Some of them make sense. In using Matthew Sweet’s “Sick of Myself”, I was given a playlist of alternative music from the 90’s, a single track from 2000, and Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life”, which found a popular re-release in the 90’s. I was only disappointed by the inclusion of Sponge’s “Plowed” because I was hoping for something more obscure. I love “Plowed”, but I like these playlists to help me re-experience the lesser known and played songs by these artists. Can’t win them all.

And for those thinking that maybe it was only L’Arc~en~Ciel that brought the Russian chicks into play, even The Pillows’ “March of Gods” was not spared.

[Note: While the half images of my iTunes were not intentional, I think they work out quite nicely. You might have noticed that you could click on them to get the full, blurry image.]