Ten songs at random from your MP3 collection. Leave 'em in comments.

I'm going to do something a little different. I downloaded the Genius function in iTunes, and I love it. The way it works is you pick a song from your basic music collection, hit the Genius button, and it generates a playlist of related songs. I can hear the nostalgia-based backlash already: "Kids these days! In my day, we had to make our own mixtapes by painstakingly putting them together. First they made it so you can just arrange and hit 'burn'. Now your computer is picking the songs for you." This, of course, is nonsense, like most nostalgia. I don't have two hours to spare anymore carefully putting together a mix tape. And you can use the "playlist" function in iTunes to work on your mixes over days or weeks in the spare moments you have until you get the perfect mix.

But playing with Genius is like getting mix tapes from your friends, but ones you can modify. Also, it's helped me clean out my MP3s. I'm on a purge of anything that I downloaded experimentally but have decided that I don't like it. I can do a quick search for anything by the offending band and then delete it. Easy! Goodbye Spoon! I thought I'd give you a chance but have realize that a great riff does not a great song make. They've proven that conclusively, but in the process helped bring the jaunty piano into indie music, for which I will begrudge them until it fucking disappears.

So here's my Genius mix. I'll pick a song and give you the first ten it matches it with.

Song: "Pile of Gold" by The Blow

1) "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal"---Of Montreal

2) "Sing Songs Along"---Tilly and the Wall

3) "Feather in a Baseball Cap"---Architecture in Helsinki

4) "The List"---Metric

5) "It Fit When I Was A Kid"---The Liars

6) "Sexy Results"---Death From Above 1979

7) "Postcards From Italy"---Beirut

8) "Handle With Care"---Jenny Lewis

9) "In One Ear & Out The Other"---Fujiya & Miyagi

10) "Fraud in the 80s"---Mates of State

See? Fun! The downside is that it doesn't grab anything obscure. But the upside of that is that it makes picking the videos easy.


Metric 'Poster of a Girl' from MJHDCS on Vimeo.


Tilly & the Wall - Reckless from Team Love on Vimeo.

And The Blow: