Actually, one of my favorite songs is No Doubt's "Just a Girl." I'm complicated, I guess. Or I just like the sound of certain music. Whatever. Onward!



This is sheer brilliance from start to finish. I love when someone who actually has an audience says what I'm thinking. Tears of unbridled amusement rolled down my face when he got to the avocado sandwich. A WHOLE PAGE ON HOW TO PUT A GODDAMN AVOCADO IN A SANDWICH. OMG. Dying.

This controversy (?) really illustrates what I hate about the social media age: a celebrity puff piece in one of those supermarket checkout impulse-buy mags being treated as SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS. Seriously, NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE SOMETHING. Can't some things just... be? This goes for music, movies, whatever. Must everything be fraught with socio-political nuance, 24 hours a day? Does it really enrich your life to be offended by something so small? If you don't like it, make a joke about it. At least that contributes something to the world besides shampoo rhetoric (lather, rinse repeat). Doesn't it get tiring to have opinions about everything, all the time?

Okay, back to talking about pop music. Specifically... this. Brace yourself.



I have Todd in the Shadows' top 10 worst list to thank for this atrocity, as I'm old enough to be able to avoid such things otherwise. Look, I am NOT a boy band fan. I don't like One Direction, never got into BSB or NKotB. It all seems too mass-produced to me, like I can picture them rolling down the assembly line. But this is just a whole new level of ridiculous. Actually, no, no, it isn't. Remember this little late 90s gem?



Did the world really need an updated version of "I like girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch?" I mean, leaving the word "underwear" hanging out there is creepy and awkward enough without the product placement. But that sends it to a level of stupid specificness that even Pat "my heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest" Monahan would roll his eyes at. "TOO FAR, MAN!" Exclaims Mr. Two-Ply Hefty Bag of Love. "That's just embarrassing."

2014 was mostly the year of barely-there music. The kind you forget while you're still listening to it. Will pop and country music just keep getting more generic, or is there a breaking point coming? I mean, my favorite pop song of the year was "Timber." Really. At least it bothered to show up.