Pandora tells me I like Ben Folds because his music exhibits major key tonality, melodic songwriting and a dynamic male vocalist. That’s how the musical genome project categorizes his music (along with dozens of other attributes they don’t surface, I’m sure). And according to that criteria, I should also like Josh Ritter, Ben Kweller and Death Cab for Cutie.

I don’t know two of those artists and I’m indifferent to the third but I’m sure they do sound something like Ben Folds and probably have some of the same fans. But does my love of Ben Folds necessarily mean that I’ll like people who sound like him? Maybe I like him despite his major key tonality (whatever that means), not because of it.

Like most people, I have a variety of musical tastes that can’t be summed up in a few carefully selected phrases. No matter how carefully and accurately the genome project dissects Ben Folds, it won’t figure out that I also really dig Eminem. I’d have to create another station to hear his music, and chances are I’d dislike most of what turned up there.

I wondered if I could create my own musical genome that more accurately accounted for my tastes. The idea wouldn’t be to group artists who sound alike but rather to find broader similarities between artists who might not sound alike at all.

I started off by writing down a list of artists who I consider my favorites. I avoided one- or two-record wonders — though I didn’t set a minimum, the list I wound up with doesn’t feature anybody with fewer than four albums. I was selective but not overly so, and wound up with a list of 35 artists.

Then I started grouping them. I discovered pretty quickly that I could do so in a number of different ways, and that some artists fell into multiple categories. Over the next seven weeks, I’m going to post a song by each of those artists and list the categories that apply. I hope to arrive at some grand unified theory of music appreciation, but at the very least I’ll play a lot of good songs.

First, the categories. I was able to assign 28 of my 35 artists to five broad groups, which I’ve labelled ‘PIANO MEN (AND WOMEN),’ ‘PURE POP,’ ‘COUNTRY PLUS,’ ‘FOLK ROCK DERIVATIVES’ and ‘MELANCHOLY.’ The remaining seven didn’t fit easily into any of those groups so I formed a separate ‘ODDBALL’ designation.

So kicking things off in chapter one of this 35-part series (and my 1,500th Song of the Day post) is Mr. Ben Folds.

Folds obviously falls into the ‘PIANO MEN (AND WOMEN)’ primary category, though he has also produced his share of ‘PURE POP’ and the occasional ‘MELANCHOLY’ tune as well. In fact, part of his genius is how he combines all three of those qualities, sometimes in the same song.

I chose ‘Claire’s Ninth,’ from Lonely Avenue (his collaboration with author Nick Hornby), for exactly that reason. It’s a bittersweet sketch of a young girl dealing with her parents’ divorce, and Folds captures the sadness in the verses but also unleashes some genuine ear candy in the chorus, even as the lyrics turn more poignant.

Ben Folds gets a gold star for fitting into three of my five musical genome buckets. Let’s see if anybody else can top that.