I don’t like heavy metal music. I pretty much hate it. If you’d ever asked me if I’d put a Metallica song on my playlist, I’d have told you no. But I’ve done just that. More precisely, I just added a cover of a Metallica song. The title is Nothing Else Matters. I still don’t think I’ll ever add an actual Metallica recording, but I listened to the original and it’s not very offensive to my ears although it’s not something I’d choose to listen to. The cover is by the band Apocalyptica, which, despite its heavy metal sounding name, is not a metal band. It’s four cellos that cover rock songs arranged in a heavy sort of classical-rock style. The song is a rather somber almost dirge-like number and quite beautiful on the cellos.

I had actually asked some AI bots for recommendations of modern bands that do classical pieces in a semi-rock style similar to A Fifth of Beethoven or Tétaz’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I got some recommendations meeting that criteria but one bot recommended Apocalyptica, warning me that it mostly did the reverse, i.e. took rock songs and did them in a semi-classical style, so it wasn’t a case of AI hallucinating.

Here are some other songs I just added to my playlists:

• Soul Shake by Delaney & Bonnie
• Only You Know and I Know by Delaney & Bonnie
• Slack Key Blues by Slack Key Ohana & Rand Anderson
• Statesboro Blues by the Acoustic Blues Travelers (I used to have two other versions in my list but I tired of those.)
• Nitty Gritty Mississippi by Ry Cooder (This was in before, but I removed it; now it’s back)
• In the Mood by the Mountain View High School Choir (I already have the Glenn Miller version in one playlist; this version goes in another)
• Love to Keep Me Warm by the Mountain View High School Choir