Pixies keep switching off my morning alarm, says Google Pixel owner
That's certainly one of the stranger headlines we've written
Cult dad rockers the Pixies have apologized to a Google Pixel owner for repeatedly turning off their smartphone's alarm in the morning, presumably when they have important stuff to do.
While this might sound like a gaggle of out-of-shape 50-somethings standing over a sleeping beauty and snoozing their wake-up call out of spite, the reality is a little more mundane if not wonderfully serendipitous.
Posting on the dedicated subreddit for Google's flagship smartphone, user "asevarte" explained their predicament:
For the past few months, I could not figure out why on random days, with seemingly no reason, sometimes my alarm would either not go off, or turn itself off very quickly. Maybe once every other week or so, I would wake up 30 minutes later on my backup alarm, with no indication as to why the first shut itself off.
Well this morning, I woke up about 5 minutes before my alarm went off, and I have cracked the code.
Anybody else who has also twigged what is going on here by now must have both an abiding love for late '80s/early '90s alternative rock and a deep understanding of Pixel features – a vanishingly slim overlap in the Venn diagram.
You see, the author's alarm starts a Spotify playlist. And on that playlist is a widely celebrated little ditty by the Pixies about snorkeling called "Where Is My Mind?" If you're not familiar with the song for its appearance on their absolute smasher of a debut album Surfer Rosa, you've probably heard it as part of the Fight Club soundtrack.
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What's unique about the track in this instance, aside from the iconic lead guitar part, is that it opens with "Ooooohhh- STOP!" before the actual song starts, perhaps the result of some minor recording mishap that the band decided to leave in.
Google in its infinite wisdom scrapped the need to say "Hey Google!" before stopping or snoozing an Assistant alarm with the Pixel 6, but obviously didn't account for the clarity with which Black Francis barks the command – because, to be fair to them, it's a bit of a fringe case.
"My Pixel has been hearing that 'stop' and turning the alarm off. Since it's a playlist on shuffle, it only comes up every once in a while, so it's not happening every morning," the Redditor reported.
Android Police and comments on the post confirmed the issue, while we'll have to take their word for it as elite iPhone enjoyers. Amusingly, a lot of people in the thread expressed frustration that they can't get the feature to work with their own voices, but hey, that's Android for you.
Black Francis aka Frank Black aka Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV was probably googling himself when he came across the matter, leading the Pixies' Twitter account to say: "Sorry about that!" ®
Speaking of Google... The web giant today teased the world with a short video of its forthcoming foldable Pixel phone, due to be announced at Google I/O on May 10.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
