Life Hacks

iTunes’ hottest track is 10 minutes of hot silence (seriously)

August 18, 2017

I have a minivan, and I have an iPhone, and when I plug the iPhone into the minivan, the iPhone, as if possessed by some demonic self-aware swing-jazz aficionado, instantly begins playing Ella Fitzgerald’s version of “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.” It does so because “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” is the first track on my alphabetical song list, so my iPhone and my car, believing they’re doing me some kind of super 8 a.m. kindergarten-dropoff favor, start playing music the very second I plug my phone in, without bothering to consult me in the slightest. It’s uncontrollable. It’s unstoppable. And for months it put me in the uncomfortable position of starting my day furious at Ella Fitzgerald.

There was no way around this problem, no satisfactory hacks I could find, because although we can motor a robot around Mars and leap to the surface of Earth from actual space — and though Apple keeps diligent track of what coffee creamer I prefer — no one has f-king figured how to f--king shut down auto-play in a f--king Honda. Skipping the track didn’t work, as that just sped things right on to Sleigh Bells’ “A/B Machines,” resulting in my now having the biggest Sleigh Bells fan in the entire kindergarten. (After that was “Aaron Burr, Sir,” in case I haven’t branded myself enough as a suburban dad yet.)

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But one day, after I am not kidding weeks of search, I found one: Create a track of silence, name it AAA and drop it into iTunes. This totally worked. Instead of kicking my day off with the by-now unbearable sounds of the (checks papers) greatest singer to ever live, I began with blissful silence, and I thought I was pretty hot stuff until, of course, someone took this idea and made money off it.

The iTunes charts are being STORMED by “A a a a a Very Good Song” by American hero Samit Mezrahi; it’s 10 minutes of silence that serve as a temporary get around to the Shitty-Apple-UI problem and gently tell Ella to take a breather for a minute. It’s brilliant. It’s elegant. And it falls squat on the list of ideas I am kicking myself for not thinking of first, which includes Five Guys’ bacon dog, the app that makes your phone sound like a lightsaber and travel baseball.

Bless you, Mr. Mezrahi, you are the Ella Fitzgerald of your time.