In which iPods serve as a window to the metro-commuters soul

I have over 3,000 songs on my iPod and I would estimate that less than 500 of them are accompanied by cover art. This leads to the following image being broadcast while I am listening to the majority of my music:

 

A friend noticed this recently and suggested that I allow iTunes to do a cover art match, filling in that glaring blank white space with something snazzy, like this:

The biggest issue with that would be that the majority of my cover art would look something like this:

As much as I want everyone standing around me in a crowded metro to know that I am rocking out to a version of that nonsense Hamster Dance song I pulled off of YouTube or Feliz Navidad in July, I think I can do without broadcasting that information to the entire D.C. metro area. Worse is when I am listening to a song that would be perfectly respectable, were it not for the fact that I am listening to the Glee version. Especially when I own the actual/respectable version on the same phone, just a few clicks away, but have voluntarily chosen to partake in a chorus of 20-to-30-year-olds parading as high school students singing what was otherwise a classic. The other issue lies not in my song choice, but in my need to listen to only one song on repeat some mornings; while the casual iPod eavesdropper might think my listening to Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads is cool, that observation might change to suspicion and then to horror after I hit repeat for the 13^th time.

While this is a problem that plagues music listeners the world over, I feel that D.C. has a special issue as many metro commuters are heading to jobs that will affect the trajectory of this nation, if not the world. The only thing worse than seeing a guy visibly upset and listening to an entire Taylor Swift album during his morning commute, is seeing that guy get off the metro at the Pentagon – we can only hope he doesn’t have access to the nuclear weapon launch codes.

I have become convinced that this is the reason that jobs requiring top-secret security clearance force their employees to have a cover on their personal devices that blocks anyone but the person directly in front of the screen from being able to read it. No one needs to know that someone is listening to Party in the U.S.A. while they head into a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or that Speaker Boehner has been listening to Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. on a non-stop loop for the last few months. (Note: I was going to make a joke here about Joe Biden’s iPod, but I can’t even begin to wrap my head around what must be in his morning playlist . . . )

Now I am not a technology genius, but it seems pretty clear to me that every iPod and cellphone that plays music should come standard with a feature that covers your embarrassing-yet-satisfying musical choices with more respectable pictures. Imagine if on your commute you could rest safe in the knowledge that while you rocked out to Ke$ha, the person next to you thought you were listening to a Paul Krugman audio book; or the appearance that you were listening to Wagner’s Ring Cycle, while you were playing the theme song from DuckTales on a loop, because that is the kind of morning you are having.

Until that time comes, keep rocking out D.C.-metro commuters; I will keep your iPod secrets, if you keep mine.