which is awesome, because for me, Holiday Hi-jinks come with a cost (other than themselves, mind you).

I drive a 1999 teal chevy cavalier. he’s a twice hand-me-down. His name is Little Blue, and i love him, except for one fact: he has no CD player. Neither does he have a tape deck. Not only that, but his cigarette charger is disconnected, so running things from the outlet is impossible.

Little Blue therefore leaves me no option but to listen to the radio. as such, i have spent the last two weeks of December driving from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, and countless jaunts in between, with nothing but the radio to ease my holiday travel boredom.

not good. But the endless exposure to the harmful music radiation has left me with a fairshare of guilty pleasures.

1) Jason Derulo. Whatcha Say.
It’s the Imogen Heap in this song that brought me over to the dark side. It is so not my typical style of music, and now lies within a small selective group of rap and hip-hop that doesn’t leave me running to the hills. (for the record, Mystical’s “Bounce Back”, and Outkast’s “Whole World” are the only other two in this category. Unless “Hammertime” and “Jump Around” count. I’m gonna go ahead and assume they don’t.)
The only problem with this song is the way he sings the phrase “I just didn’t know what to do”. the “what to do” part is spit out in such a way that for a second i question whether his IQ is above 70.

2) P!nk. Funhouse.
It didn’t hit the airwaves that much, but enough that i kept hitting the scan button in a fruitless attempt at avoiding Miley Cyrus. If you ask me, i think Miley Cyrus might be the Evil Clown to which P!nk alludes.

3) Lady Gaga. Bad Romance.
Lady Gaga is nuts. And i love her. It is in fact the insanity present in this song that appeals to me. and the beat. and the ‘Gaga oh-lala’.
what also appeals to me about this song? it’s not paparazzi or telephone. i want to punch those songs in the face.

4) 3oh!3. Don’t Trust Me.
This is old by now, but for some reason it hit the radio with a vengeance these past few weeks. It has taken months of steady and solid disinterest, but it’s finally winning me over. except the part it’s most famous for: the Hellen Keller part. that part just reminds me that the rest of the song makes little sense, and the writers are probably douchebags.

5) Owl City. Fireflies.
The first 3 million times i heard this song i thought The Postal Service made a comeback. the 4th million time i heard it i started to realize it wasn’t the Postal Service, but it wasn’t until listen 4,589,341 that the announcer actually said the band in question. This song is enjoyable for the strings present, and the fact that a “sock hop” is actually in the equation. The voice isn’t so bad, and the lyrics are acceptable. The fact that it is almost directly a page out of the Postal Service’s book, and that it’s about 42 seconds long are not in it’s favor. but it sure as hell beats miley cyrus.

With my guilty indulgences out of way, i move forward to Most Rued songs of the Holiday Season.

1) Miley Cyrus. All of it.
Oh how i rue this young woman and her pathetic attempts at music. i rue!

2) Lady Gaga. Paparazzi.
As much as i appreciate Lady Gaga and her danceable tunes, i hate Paparazzi. It’s slow. It’s not dancey. the beat is lagging so much to be mistaken for missing, and it is overplayed like whoa. for serious, this song drives me nuts. it was okay when i only heard it every once in a while, but this three-times-an-hour business is for the birds.

3) Lady Gaga. Telephone.
If Lady Gaga likes to play subtle jokes on mindless celebrities through her music, she is going to have to backtrack something fierce with the advent of this song. It is not subtle. it is overbearing, it is brutal and it is stupid. The lyrics are uninspired, the music mediocre, and the singing is bland. this song annoys me greatly.

4) Taylor Swift. Love Story.
I was amazed to hear the other day that this song beat out “Just Dance” for the yearly countdown. Impressive. except for the fact that this song is truly just insipid. Lady Gaga may be mocking people through her music, but Taylor Swift actually thinks getting hitched so young you can’t drink at your own wedding is brilliant and romantic. yech.

5) Ke$ha. Tik Tok.
I have no idea where this came from. The singer and the song came out of left field. it has been widely reported that left field is the advent of most musical suffering, and i wish for the sake of humanity she would take her junk and flee back to this left field of doom. holy wow. and that is so not how you spell “Tick Tock”.

It’s always a toss-up. With so many varieties of stupid girls out there, which one(s) do i rue the most?

Seven months later, and “Just Dance” is a regular player in my shuffle. The surprising veritable revolt Lady Gaga seemed to have staged in my tastes I tend to attribute to changing seasons, however I also by chance stumbled across another one of her songs (during a YouTube binge) entitled “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich” and it was a moment of revelation.

It was all a mockery.

The satire was so incredibly well done that I had at first completely missed it, although I imagine that only a few outside of her DJ circle would have caught it on first listen (I like to tell myself). She wasn’t just another Britney or Christina parading around (although she most certainly does parade) for the whim of the industry – she was taking one long drawn out pot-shot at the lifestyle and the hype, and the irony is that a huge portion of her fans like her for the style she mocks and not the derision itself.

Of course I could also be very mistaken. For her part, Gaga is not shedding much light either way except to say “The Fame is about how anyone can feel famous”… Sounds like psychobabble to me.

After I had just begun to settle in with Lady Gaga, her fans became rabid. Play after play echoed across the airwaves in a never ending Gagafest that made even the most enlightened partaker lose all mirth at the absurdity of it all. By this point I had acquired the album and had played it regularly, but certainly not every five minutes as a leisure trip to Las Vegas would see. She was everywhere – and I mean EVERYWHERE. The satellite radio in our rental couldn’t go for more than 15 minutes without taking a Lady Gaga hit, and soundtracks across the city for everything from the shops to the restaurants were loaded with at least three Gaga track. It was enough to swear off of her for good… Or at least take a significant break which I needed to do prior to writing this piece.

The music itself is nearly perfect for danceable pop. Aptly named “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” are the most club worthy – and are coincidentally nearly identically constructed songs – but other beat-maintaining notables are “I Like It Rough” and “Starstruck.” The ludicrous lyrics of virtually every piece are theoretical testament to the satirical nature of the album, and the music videos are more often funny than purely artistic. The video for “Poker Face,” for instance, appears to use costumes from prominent Final Fantasy scenes lending a geeky overtone to an otherwise typically lusty song.

What to take away…

Lady Gaga is one of those top 40 artists that seems to simply polarize listeners. Love her or hate her (or both) I would recommend seeing a few music videos and paying attention to the words she uses before dismissing her for all time. Once you begin to see the farce that I fully believe she spins, the album becomes a lot more enjoyable.

What should you expect?

Classic adult pop with a bit more electronic than is customary. She has undeniably sexual tones throughout the album with a lot of it being broad innuendo.

What drink would she pair with?

Cranberry and vodka – a staple cocktail of clubs everywhere.

Favorite song?

I’m a sucker for “Just Dance” – the wit in it is better concealed than some of the other songs, and it otherwise is simply a good dance song. I just can’t say no to a song that makes me unconsciously head-bob.