Message in the playlist of the unlikely saboteur

Forget about feeling sorry for Britney; Jammie Thomas is pop culture’s most suitable empathy sponge today. After Thursday’s ruling in the first of what could be many online music-pirating cases to reach a jury, the 30-year-old Native American single mom from Brainerd, Minn. (median household income: $26,901) owes the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) $222,000 for participating in illegal file-sharing over the peer-to-peer application Kazaa.

It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely saboteur. Aren’t the major labels being defeated by Bapes-wearing gamers jacking Kanye West and Arcade Fire tracks? Thomas does have two children -- ages 11 and 13 -- and the RIAA has made it a policy to go after parents first. We’ll likely never know whether she fell on a sword for her kids, but her playlist -- the copyright-infringed songs she’s now paying for, at the cost of $9,250 each -- tells another story. And it’s a sad one about the impoverished state of the corporate music machine.

Thomas’ list has hipsters groaning. It includes some of the most banal Top 40 songs of recent memory: songs by 1980s balladeers Richard Marx and Bryan Adams, quiet-storm beauty queen Vanessa Williams and the feathered-hair kings in Journey. Teen tastes may be represented by the presence of Green Day and Linkin Park tracks. “In her defense,” one respondent posted on the pop-music blog Idolator, “I wouldn’t pay for any of these songs either.”

But look at the list beyond the prejudices of taste: It’s eclectic. A Reba McEntire track represents classic country. There’s some Gloria Estefan for that Latin freestyle flavor. It’s easy to imagine Thomas getting out her aggressions after a hard day at the office -- she works for her own tribe, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwa -- by turning up “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses.

This is a playlist for a family party, wide-ranging enough for everybody to be satisfied. It has a lived-in feel, with songs spanning four decades, probably marking highlights in the life of Thomas and those she loves. What it isn’t, though, is something you’d hear on the radio, or be able to buy on any compilation that’s in print.

True, Thomas could have burned a CD of these tracks, from the vast record collection she claims to own. She could have purchased the songs from iTunes. But what she probably really wanted to do was just hear them occasionally, the way you hear songs on the radio. But radio, split into niche markets and limited by tiny, repetitive playlists, wasn’t giving her that.

Pop hits saturate the airwaves, television and the speakers at the mall for a brief time, until they reach obsolescence. Occasionally they’ll pop up in a TV show or film soundtrack. But a pop fan who wants a little country, a little metal and some hip-hop won’t easily find it in one environment.

Popular music has always been a leaky commodity, but the major labels have increasingly narrowed their scope. The Internet has made eclectic listening easy again. Thomas’ crime was in not paying for the tracks she allegedly shared. But in a way, it was self-defense, against the numbing effects of an increasingly narrowcast mainstream.