I was at Denny’s earlier today, and they seem to have an annoying habit of playing the most atrocious of modern pop music through their speakers. I’m talking about the Beyoncé “Single Ladies” song, and all sorts of horrible dreck from Miley Cyrus. I found myself thinking, “how can anyone, even today’s brain-dead youth, like this garbage?”

Of course, I knew full well that in the early 90s, when I was in my early 20s and enjoying at least some of my generation’s pop music, there was probably some dejected, degenerate geezer complaining about then contemporary music. And he’d probably faced similar complaints from his elders 20 years earlier. And on and on, backward through time, towards the period where primitive cavemen were slapping each other on the head for not liking the latest beats being pounded out on the skulls of sabertooth tigers.

A belief I’ve long held is that only the young can truly enjoy the pop music of the day. Their ears are still virginal; they have not been soiled by repeated listens to melodies, chord progressions and lyrics that were stolen from songs of yore. To the young, everything is fresh. To see their dreams, they need only look up to the rainbows, as opposed to gazing down into the liquid filth of a train station men’s room while a medical syringe pours its poison into their yellow veins.

Beyoncé still sucks though.