Excerpt from my pandemic diary, day 132: “The kids asked Alexa to play ‘Roar’ 53 times today. I can feel my sanity slipping away. I fear what I might do if I can’t get Katy Perry to stop.” If this situation sounds all too familiar to you, or if you’re simply tired of asking Alexa to skip a particularly annoying song on your favorite playlist, you’re in luck: There are a few different methods you can use to prevent your Amazon smart speaker from ever playing a song, or even an artist, you hate again, including voice commands and Alexa’s “Routines” functionality.

Before we get started, a word of warning: while you can ask Alexa to stop playing a song you don’t want to hear, this functionality as described below only works with Amazon Music, which is Alexa’s music service of choice by default (obviously). If you prefer Spotify, YouTube Music, or another service, you’ll have to explore their own service-specific settings for skipping songs. If you use Amazon Music and you’re trying to stop a song from playing when it appears on a playlist you’re listening to (or a wide selection of similar playlists), you can easily do so by telling Alexa that you don’t want to hear that song anymore. When the song is playing, simply say something like “Alexa, never play this song” or “Alexa, I don’t like this song.” Alexa will register your distaste and should theoretically skip it the next time she comes across it in a playlist. This is an imperfect solution, however: you may have to voice your displeasure a few times if the song appears on multiple playlists you listen to and those playlists are different enough that Alexa doesn’t classify them as similar. It also doesn’t seem to work consistently if you’ve asked Alexa to play songs by a particular artist; Alexa will seemingly honor your request, but in my experience, the song may still come up the next time your kid yells “ALEXA PLAY PERRY GRIPP!” at the smart speaker (to use a completely random example). If you want a more surefire way to block a song, try…

If you’ve never explored Alexa’s robust “Routines” functionality before, you should check it out. You can use it to program a whole host of actions you want Alexa to perform, including preventing her from accepting song requests you’d rather reject. If you want to prevent Alexa from playing a certain song (or even a certain artist), you can create a routine that triggers a different action whenever someone asks to hear a song on your “no no” list. You can even use the same basic steps to permanently block all songs from a certain artist; it’s all about managing your routines. Here’s how to do it:

1. Launch the Alexa app on your phone and tap the three lines in the top left corner, tap “Routines,” then tap the large plus sign in the center of the screen to create a new routine (if you have existing routines, look for the smaller plus sign in the top right corner).