Anita Baker and Rage Against the Machine

Want to hear something odd? I was driving to work this morning, and my Ipod was on its usual "shuffle songs" mode. I felt something was off when I realized that I was peacefully listening to "Sweet Love" by Anita Baker (http://www.noolmusic.com/blogs/YouTube_Music_Videos_80s_90s_-_Anita_Baker_-_Sweet_Love.shtml), only to be followed by some drum-banging on the dashboard to the tune of "Take the Power Back" by Rage Against the Machine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdkh1iMT_M). Even more bizarre was the fact that I was not fazed by this schizophrenic manifestation of musical randomness.

I always thought there was some algorithm in the determination of the sequence of songs on shuffle mode, which relies on several factors such as the number of times a track is played and which songs are most similar in genre to a previously/subsequently played song. Clearly, the algorithm was out of control this morning.

Yet, despite this incident, I am a true believer in the concept of the music genome project. Our individual different musical tastes converge at a certain point with similar characteristics, rhythm, chord progression etc. So I believe that the R&B movement had a lot to do with the development of hard rap pro-communist tunes you get from bands like Rage Against the Machine. Hard sell? Maybe. For more on the music genome project, check out http://www.pandora.com/.

How diverse is your musical taste?