Mood Music

I listen to Pandora online radio at work. Depending on my work tempo and level of stress, I will flip through my self-created stations to find something that either soothes or inspires. I have several stations. For those of you not familiar with Pandora, it works like this: You create an account, then create stations based on a song or an artist that strikes your fancy. Pandora then finds other music with characteristics similar to those of the chosen song or artist. They say it more eloquently on the page, so I probably should have just copied that, but I already typed this so there it is.

My stations are:

1. Claude Debussy
2. New Kids on the Block
3. Golden Years (by David Bowie)
4. Chain of Fools (by Aretha Franklin)
5. New Pornographers
6. Poison
7. Reel Big Fish
8. Rusted Root
9. Rod Stewart
10. The Music of the Night (from Phantom of the Opera)
11. Better Than Ezra

This list is not to brag about my ecelectic music taste. Frankly, the stations tend to overlap, sometimes in ways I do not understand. Par example, the same God-forsaken Coldplay song has shown up and been thumbs-downed on 4 different stations.

Anyway, since my music taste changes with my mood, I often find myself wondering why I gave certain songs a thumbs up. There are some really grating songs that I apparently decided were worth listening to a second time. In the end, they were not. Also, I have no particular allegiance to Debussy: I was looking for some good classical music to have playing in the background when lyrics would just ruin my train of thought.

Well, there's work to be done.