PSA: If You’re Late To Work, Try Blaming The Pixies

I’m a weird guy, but you all knew that already. One of the ways in which I’m particularly weird is that I have not used any sort of an alarm clock in roughly 20 years (I’m in my 40s). For whatever reason, I can decide in my mind when I want to wake up and then it just sort of happens. All of which is to say that this story about an alarm clock app is largely foreign to me.

But if I did use one, and if I ever found myself running late to something as a result of not waking up on time, I would immediately blame famed-band The Pixies, and you should, too. That is because one the band’s hit songs appears to successfully stop Google’s Assistant alarms on several smart displays and phones. How? Well…

It wasn’t long ago when Google rolled out a handy feature that made Assistant alarms shut up by simply saying “Stop” or “Snooze” — none of that “Hey Google” nonsense needed. These quick phrases were first available for alarms and timers on Google Assistant smart speakers and displays like the Nest Hub, but they eventually made their way to Google’s phones starting with the Pixel 6. Now, users are reporting some hilarious unintended side effects with this feature.

After noticing their alarms didn’t seem to go off on certain days, one Redditor woke up early to get to the bottom of the issue. The Pixies song Where Is My Mind? started playing since it was in a Spotify playlist the user had set as their music alarm in the Google Clock app. If you’re familiar with the song, it starts with a person singing “Oooh,” then someone else cuts them off by exclaiming “Stop!” before music starts playing.

And you can already see where this is going. The app hears the command at the beginning of the song and complies. Seconds into the alarm going off, it ceases because the band’s Kim Deal tells it to.

But per the source post, this isn’t as wide-spread a problem as you might think. The folks over at Android Police and others tested a variety of songs that have the word “stop” in them, such as U Can’t Touch This and Ice Ice Baby, but those did not have the same effect. Why? Likely because Quick Phrases is set to ignore those words if they are part of a song, which is what makes the Pixies song somewhat unique.

Where Is My Mind is unique in the fact that its “Stop!” comes before music really starts playing. Google’s Quick Phrases feature seems to ignore the command when it’s backed by instrumentals or vocals, even when the music drops out as the phrase is said. That lines up with all the user reports we’ve seen complaining that Assistant never hears them yelling “Stop!” over the sound of the music playing when they’re actually trying to use this feature.

It’s definitely an edge case, and a funny one at that. But Google might do well to teach its word detection model to ignore this one sound bite in particular.

Or the world can learn to magically command themselves to get up at a certain time like I do. Though, I’ll admit that might not be entirely feasible.