Not to belabor the point – because it doesn’t really need a lot of explanation – but the US Top 40 has sucked moose balls for a very long time. The fashion in recent years has tended toward prefabricated diva pop, braindead hit-hop and cynical producer-driven techno-pop music-like product. Imagine Simon Cowell’s iPod, in other words. Oscar Wilde once described fox hunting as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.” Find a way to work “unlistenable” into the phrase somehow and you have the whole US hit music industry just about nailed.

So imagine my bafflement at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 2012. Read more