For whatever reason, I wanted to hear “A Forest” by the Cure, so I said “Alexa, play a forest by the Cure.”

Unfortunately, it played a radio-friendly version of the song and not the one from the Seventeen Seconds album. The one from the album has a droning synthesizer and a very slow guitar that establishes the mood of the song. I can’t think of a more powerful way for a song to say “This is by the Cure.”

The mood-setting section is completely missing from the radio-friendly version. I let the song finish and Alexa played a song that it thought was similar.

I dug out my phone, connected it to Alexa, and played the “right” version from my phone. Much better.

I started fiddling with my phone – Facebook and whatnot. I found a video that I played. To my surprise, the sound came out on Alexa. I realized that my phone was still connected to speakers.

I disconnected my phone from the Alexa and the sound from the video stopped playing on Alexa and started playing on my phone.

But now, Alexa was playing a random 80s punk song. I guessed that when I interrupted Alexa with my song from my phone, it just paused the songs-like-a-forest playlist and was waiting for me to disconnect to start playing again.

I called out “Alexa stop” to finally shut it up.

It seems like a lot of work to just play a song.