Apple Music Equalizer does not work until turned off/on

This has been a frustrating bug that has been around for years, in iTunes and now Music. Except now it's worse. Previously, I could just pause/resume the song and it would start working. Now I have to open the equalizer every time. To make matters worse, it's now applying something that doesn't sound like flat, but is not my equalizer preset. I saw on another old thread that Apple is not aware of this issue, but there are over 300 people on that thread saying they have the same problem. Apple Music on MacOS is a train wreck. It's also missing the < button (to go back to an artist when you're listening to an album) since the latest update but that's a whole other issue. Come on Apple, why can't you get these seemingly dead simple things right?