To quote Alvy Singer in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, who in turn paraphrases Groucho Marx while attributing it to Sigmund Freud:  "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member. That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.” If it’s true for Alvy and his women, it’s certainly been true for me in terms of bands or musicians I’m usually associated with.

A lot of the people who like the albums I’ve made as Solex tend to like female vocalists––particularly singers with naïve childlike voices. I hate to say it, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the girlie “I’m-innocent-and-still-a-virgin” thing. I’m not talking about French singers like Françoise Hardy, Jane Birkin and the like–– they’re anything but innocent. They can drop from a full-on croon down to a sexy whisper or throaty purr. They do what every good singer should do: seduce and engage. Even Madonna looked like a veteran when she sang “Like a Virgin.”

My voice has never exactly sounded wrinkled and mature but, believe me, that isn’t something I treasure. I hate it when people think they’re hearing a 10-year-old sing.  On one song  I even tried grunting to shake off the under-aged tone in my voice. Needless to say, the result was horrible.

When listeners log onto Pandora, they pick a song or musician they like and Pandora serves up songs with similar qualities. According to a recent New York Times article about the internet radio service, "Pandora’s 48 million users tune in an average 11.6 hours a month...Its library now has 700,000 songs, each categorized by an employee and based on a choice of 400 musical attributes, like whether the voice is breathy, like Charlotte Gainsbourg, or gravelly like Tom Waits."

As I read that, my heart went out to the poor boys and girls who do this for a living. They’re almost certainly devoted music fans but I fear they will suffer professional deformation after some time. A bit like the proverbial “doctor who takes your pulse while shaking your hand,” for the rest of their lives they’ll screen every tune that passes by, analyzing its particular set of qualities, and will never again be able to enjoy music the way they had before.
 
I live in Holland and unfortunately Pandora is blocked in Europe due to the music licensing agreement between the site, the record labels and the musicians. When I try to enter the site it offers a surprisingly emotional apology: “We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.”