When a Youtube Suggestion Offers Nothing

 

The Music Genre That Is Specific Situations

 

Here's a new genre of youtube videos that is also (arguably) a musical genre: songs/videos that are very specific situations.

For instance, have you heard "It’s 1993 and you’re in a hotel pool (Vaporwave Mix)?" That's the video above. I like this song because I remember being in a hotel pool in 1993. But don't confuse this one with "It’s 1994 and you’re in a hotel pool." Those are two different years and time waits for no man.

But then you might also check out "It's summer 1989 and you're cruising in Los Angeles."

Or how about "It's sunset in 1991 and you're on AOL (Vaporwave Mix)" I'm not sure anyone was on AOL in 1991 but the spirit is right.

Another thing I've never experienced but am curious about is "It's 1985 and you’re at the beach on summer break (Synthwave Mix)."

On the other hand, I do remember "It's a Friday night and you're at Blockbusters", I've just never heard the song.

And the same for "It's summer of 1995 and you just came in from outside".

And so forth.

Now, one of the rules I have about declaring a new youtube genre is that the videos have to come from more than one channel. I was thinking that confirming such a thing is nearly impossible because how do you search for this as a category? 

That being said, the "summer 1989" video above is from a different channel than the rest. That's technically sufficient. I've also tried searching for "vaporwave" and there are a few other channels so I'll say it's legit.

Youtube Recommends...

 I've been frustrated with Youtube recommendations for a long time. It's not that I hold them responsible for entertaining me, but I've suspected that their algorithm is purposely designed to recommend videos they already know I have no interest in.

With that said, I got a chuckle today as "Himiko Kikuchi - Flying Beagle (1987)" was recommended to me.

In the past I've dipped my toes in the "Japanese Jazz/Funk" genre and enjoyed it. Plus, I'm a fan of smooth music in general (hence the blog title). And I don't usually publicly talk about this but I have a soft spot for videos of beagles, particularly when trying to relax. And so I recognize Youtube's ability to find a recommendation that (sort of) combines these disparate genres into a single file. Hats off to them in this particular instance.