Frank & XM.

I spent 14 hours in the car yesterday, roadtripping home to North Carolina from Notre Dame. Lucky for me, the car I was in had XM satellite radio. I spent the majority of the trip fiddling around with the dial, flicking through hundreds of channels of music and news and comedy shows. To my surprise, Frank Sinatra has his very own channel--#73. It's an XM/Sirius collaboration called "SIRIUSly Sinatra." Cue eye rolls.

I was so excited at the prospect of listening to Frank for the duration of my journey, but I quickly became disillusioned with the Sinatra station. It wasn't all Sinatra! The channel mostly played covers or songs that could be tangentially related to Sinatra, but weren't actually sung by him. A lot of the artists on the station were of the "Sinatra era" (which is, as we've learned, very broad)--some probably performed with Sinatra at some point, and many were his direct competitors. It only takes a few notes to recognize Frank's voice, and more often than not, it wasn't Frank I was hearing. I heard Bing Crosby, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Harry Connick Jr., Dean Martin, Rod Stewart (!), Shirley Temple, Nancy Sinatra, and Doris Day, but only a handful of songs actually sung by Old Blue Eyes himself. 

XM must have cheaped out and purchased a too-small selection of Sinatra music, because the other stations dedicated to particular artists didn't seem to be running out of material. Disappointed with the Sinatra channel, I kept turning back to the Elvis station (#18). Every time I tuned in, it was Elvis singing. I even caught The King covering Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," and it was awesome. Nobody but Elvis sings on the Elvis station. Same thing for the Bruce Springsteen station (#58). A few other artists "host" channels which play music of a particular genre, like Radio Margaritaville (#55) and B.B. King's Bluesville (#74).

If you're gonna make the claim that a channel is "SIRIUSly Sinatra," then own up to it! I want all Sinatra, all the time. 

In the mean time, a Sinatra channel on Pandora serves the same purpose as the XM channel. And it's free.