HomePod Morning music Automations - Randomly Skips songs in play list

I have my HomePod (version 18.0) setup with 3 Morning Automations. These automations trigger a specific Apple Music Play list at 8 am depending on the day of the week.

The Automations work fine. They are all set to Shuffle.

For over a year I did have ONE automation playing at 8 AM everyday of one playlist set to shuffle, but after a long while it gets boring. And this worked fine with no ISSUES.

While I was setting up the 3 new Automations my HOMEPOD did upgrade to Version 18.

PROBLEM:

The HomePod starts playing at the correct time with the correct list on the correct day. But then Randomly it will skip songs, any where from 3 to 10 songs before fully playing anther song.

It will play any where from a few seconds of a song before it skips to 30 seconds then skip.

It might play 2 songs before the skipping issue starts or 5 songs. There is no constant in the issue.

Oddly enough if I just stop the Music from the Home App and then close the Home App. Start the list on my IPhone from Apple Music, Click Shuffle , and choose HomePod as the Audio out source it works fine.

NO SKIPPING Randomly.