Genius!

If you haven't already, you must must MUST update your itunes so you can add its new feature, Genius.

Genius automatically creates playlists for you from the songs you have on your itunes, based on the song you are currently listening to. I decided I really wanted to make a '60's British Invasion mix, so instead of going through all 3,432 songs that I currently have on Itunes and honing out the ones that would fit in with the playlist I wanted, I clicked the song "Play with Fire" by the Rolling Stones and then hit the "genius" button - and voila! A playlist of 1960's rock appeared. Among the songs on the mix are "She's Not There" by the Zombies, "Season of the Witch" by Donovan, "Back Door Man" by The Doors, and "Tangerine" by Led Zeppelin.

Not everything ended up being from the British Invasion (kind of weird the Beatles didn't pop up - since I have 216 Beatles song on Itunes), but you can edit the playlist Genius creates as well. You can take off songs that you don't want on the mix, and you can also ask it to add more songs to it. Once you have your ideal playlist, you can save it and add it to your I-pod, if you so desire.

I collect music. I'll hear a song on the radio I like while I'm driving, and the second I get home, I'll download it from itunes. Any CD I buy (yes, I still buy CD's - I like physically owning music, and I like supporting artists who make great music), I'll put directly onto Itunes. Yet, after a while, it's hard to keep track of all the music that I have in my collection. Oftentimes a song will get lost amongst the thousands of others and I'll forget all about it. I don't often use shuffle because there are just too many songs, and I'll end up skipping over most of them because I won't have the patience to listen to a song I don't recognize when I'm in the mood for a particular song. Genius is great because it will add a song I forgot I had to the mix it has created, and it will be a song that I'll be able to listen to because it will be the same genre as the other songs on the playlist. I made a Genius mix based off of the song "West Coast" by Coconut Records, which is the actor Jason Schwartzman's side project (indie rock is the best way to categorize it), and I rediscovered the song "Skinny Love"" by Bon Iver.

My dad heard "Skinny Love" on satellite radio on a station called "Left of Center" that plays underground mostly alternative and folk rock music, and he loved the song so much that he downloaded it. When he sent it to me, I listened to it once as background music when I was busy doing something else, so I didn't give it my full attention and then dismissed it. When it popped up on Genius, I heard it again and really liked it. The opening acoustic guitar rift has this mellow, melancholy sound that just sucks you in. Iver starts out singing quietly, kind of moaning, and then picks up volume and speed by the bridge. He sings angrily, "And I told you to be patient, and I told you to be fine, and I told you to be better, and I told you to be kind. And if all your love was wasted, then who the hell was I?" It's pretty amazing - check it out!

I'm leaving for San Diego tonight for a few days, so I'm going to make a Genius mix of good music for traveling. I'll base it off of the song "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead off of American Beauty - probably my all-time favorite song. Ever.

Peace.