Benedict Cumberbatch not required.

From the school of "No Shit Sherlock" suggestions that also includes "You like ham AND bread. Have you thought about having...... a sandwich?" and "You've been to Camden and Westminster, why not visit...... London?". Particularly impressive use of the word "might" in this suggestion, which I guess is trying to cover the option that I chose to listen to Julian Cope for sado-masochistic motives.

Toilet based humour alert.

A lot of times the suggestions from Spotify aren't so much "I'd never do that" as "I'd never do that BECAUSE of that". Chris Difford once had to take a toilet break during a Squeeze concert. When he came back on stage the band made fun of him, but he explained that he had been desperate and that on arrival at the WC had been forced to do an exceptional large evacuation. Robert Plant recorded Big Log. Bingo. There's your connection.

Television. Feeding ignorance and breeding radiation.

It's those pesky TV Theme Players again. Ignoring their claims to be connected to every band that ever existed, who the jiggery pokery is that in this photo claiming to be Sweet?? Sweet, who look nothing at all like this bunch of Dad dancing, spandex wearing, disability scooter riding ne'erdowells, had a hit with Blockbuster. A show hosted by Bob Holness who played Saxophone on Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty. Yes, I know he didn't, but clearly the Spotify algorithm will believe any connection even if Everett True made it up for a laugh in the Melody Maker in 1982.

Most inaccurate title ever.

I'm willing to bet it isn't.

Quasi latino based misery

I've thought about this one a lot, as there's nothing intrinsically inept in recommending Joe Jackson when you like Herb Alpert or even, at a stretch, when you like The The. What's puzzling me is I'm being recommended Joe Jackson as the cross section of those two. Are there no miserablist nihilist, on the border, Mejicano acts closer to the Jackson sound and we had to go straight to The The? What's the route by which The The and the Tijuana Brass connect? And which halfwit is in charge of that map? Some of these band connections seem to be more persistent than others. The The is a particular favourite of Spotify's for suggesting links where none seemingly exist. Like The The? Have you tried Kool & The Gang?

Television. The Blood of the Nation.

Nena is German and sang 99 Red Ballons while waving her under arm hair at us on Top of the Pops. Solutions for underarm hair feature in a lot of adverts. Adverts appear on Television. Television has programmes on it, and those programmes have theme tunes. Whilst debating which theme tune went "dur dur dur, dur dur dur" the other day, we used Spotfy to try and find out. And now we like Nena. It really is obvious when you think about it.

Angst/Folk interface

Remember when Richard Thompson released his seventh album opus about the war in the middle east and the eventual end of the capitalist system through sexual depravity and consumerism? And of course there was Matt Johnson's album "Fa da da lee dee daa daa, sticking my finger in my ear adio di do". Fact fans note that both their names end in "son". There you go then. I'm excited to see this policy extended to other potential connections - Look! Both their names end in a letter combination!! You MUST like both.

Clash of the Wives

Now I'm not saying this is impossible. Just incredibly incredibly incredibly unbelievably infinitessimally unlikely. Roughly about the same chance as if Spotify just randomly picked any two pieces of music. I've been puzzling over this one, trying to work our whether it thinks the word "Clash" might be "Military" and bingo, Robert is your mother's brother. I still think they must have programmed it to ignore 1,000,000,000,000 more likely connections in order to get here though.

Yo, yo, yo.... in the White Room.

Ooooooo..... so close. "he got the ball in his own half there and ran with it, circling several players and even doing an overhead back flick before lining up a killer shot which totally left the keeper stranded. Such a shame about it being into his own goal, but amazing play nonetheless". If you like The Byrds, that seems like a reasonably safe bet that you might also like Cream. But not the parental advisory explicit lyrics gangster rap Cream who is ghetto famous.

Look! There is music!

Ah. Well now we've moved from "I'm going to totally randomly suggest the names of two music acts and pretend there is a connection that only I know" to "LOOK! MUSIC EXISTS!". Who is the mysterious (0)? I don't even have the symbols on my keyboard that go with his name. Is he recommending I listen to Bad Guys, and if so, why? Is it advertising? Is it auto-suggestion? Is it hypnotism? Is it the worst logo I've ever seen? Spotify algorithm: Now just randomly shouting things out. Perhaps it has tourette's?

Electro Morrissey

Because they both are English? Because Morrissey famously likes Chips? Is one of Hot Chip called "Smith"?

Gypsy Sadness

 When I'm finished listening to songs about death, cancer, disease, the misery and pain of life and reaffirming the human spirit, I always reach directly for a bloke shouting incomprehensibly in a cod Eastern European accent whilst a bunch of romanys smash some instruments up behind him.

Cockney Folk

Both use chords. And at least one guitar. And they both have hair. And, of course, they are both music. Result!

Musicologists take note

Rock's rich tapestry falls into a space time wormhole and proposes Donovan as the alternative leader of the grunge movement popularised in the mid 80s by Ian McCulloch?

What we learnt today.

The universe is a vast expanse of possibilities. Some say it is infinite. According to a restrictive definition, the Universe is everything within our connected space-time that could have a chance to interact with us and vice versa. According to the general theory of relativity, some regions of space may never interact with ours even in the lifetime of the Universe, due to the finite speed of light and the ongoing expansion of space. For example, radio messages sent from Earth may never reach some regions of space, even if the Universe would live forever; space may expand faster than light can traverse it. Distant regions of space are taken to exist and be part of reality as much as we are; yet we can never interact with them. The spatial region within which we can affect and be affected is the observable universe. Strictly speaking, the observable Universe depends on the location of the observer. By traveling, an observer can come into contact with a greater region of space-time than an observer who remains still, so that the observable Universe for the former is larger than for the latter. Nevertheless, even the most rapid traveler will not be able to interact with all of space. Typically, the observable Universe is taken to mean the Universe observable from our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy. In an infinite universe, every possibility, no matter how remote, has a probability of 1: Any unlikelihood divided by infinity must be happening. And that's how Spotify builds its suggestions.

Hive mind fail

It's like playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon, only in this version any connection, no matter how tenuous, counts. Donovan sounds like Doner Van. Squeeze liked to eat Doner Kebabs. T Rex...... no, can't think of anything.

Godwin's Law invoked by Spotify

You know what was popular in Germany in 1936 Spotify? Yeah.... exactly.

Neighbourhood Watch

Is it too late to call a tactical nuclear strike on the area surrounding my house? What does this mean exactly? Is music taste now a division of biology, resulting from osmosis of the sounds around you? Perhaps it's meant to be like a warning: Don't invite your neighbours round, look what they've been listening to.

Have you tried poking your eyes out with a sharp stick? Why not give it a go.

Actual fact: When Jessie J starts singing, my dog asks to be let outside as he is convinced that a warning siren has announced the imminent destruction of the planet. In this photo you can see Ms J going "Doh! Forgot to put my bloody clothes on again". Wild? I was livid.

The Bermuda Triangle of connections

The line connecting your listening pleasure has been diverted 12,000 miles in the opposite direction and now includes banjoes and songs about rabbits. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Are you sure about this?

Are they really Spotify? Are they? Are they though? Really? REALLY?

Who?

Yes. Because even though you know enough about the eighties to know that Yazoo and Soft Cell exist, you apparently slept through the three number 1s and only Spotify has the power to bring them to your attention

All about the harmonies.

"Hey Curt, you know that seventeen part harmony that's vaguely Bach in style that Brian Wilson attempted on Our Prayer?"
"Yeah"
"Let's not do anything even slightly like that".

Listeners may also enjoy.......

....because that's the exact sound John Lydon was aiming for, a sort of throwback R&B with mod embellishments. He only played all that dub reggae white noise 13/7 time signature stuff because they couldn't find the chord book for Sha La La La Lee, you know.

Yeah, I'm guessing it's June