Symposium on Pandora Stations

I listen to Spice Girls Radio on Pandora during my workout and I think its balance of feel good female rock and ecstasy fueled pop hits is both uplifting and cogent. Plus I like to imagine myself in tiny glitter shorts and faux fur coat, bouncing around in a private room with a mirror where no one can judge me.

The Beatles Radio sounds like a natural choice for more introspectively tasted people and they do occasionally play things from The White Album and Beatles For Sale, but they also tend to play a lot of Mamas And The Papas live recordings and Simon And Garfunkel. To me this is like adding The Smashing Pumpkins station and then getting The Cardigan's Lovefool after you just heard Zero. It's like "Yeah, I see you're taking me back to a place in time, but I'd just rather stick to the caliber and genre I requested, thank you."

Roxy Music Radio is good, but only makes a big connection to people who are females born between 1975 and 1988 that would also form a liking for Labyrinth, ironic unicorn sweaters and John Cusack. It's the kind of girl that says "I would like to make love to a man who wears skinny ties, but I'm too rooted in reality to know that that guy is probably nothing like Bryan Ferry or one of the 3 Ultimate David's [more on this later]. He would probably be really unlikable and insist upon himself in a way that I just could not emotionally support. I'm also better off not liking men who own eyeliner or men who smoke caustic old world cigarettes." A girl has to be practical.

Kate Bush Radio is my favorite Pandora discovery because I believe that when my husband walks in on me listening to it, he genuinely has no idea what's wrong with me that day. Did he do something? Have I started drinking wine too early? Am I thinking about my dead cat again? Given that I know Kate Bush is primarily popular with your Burning Man white dreadlocks, your lesbians, your Ren Fair seamstresses and your women's studies majors, it's easy to assume that married people who look at furniture showrooms together aren't typically listening to Babushka. If I add the Tori Amos station he's going to start asking questions.