Always on the run

Pop music is confusing to me.

Today, a student asked me if I liked Kid Rock. I recognized the name as a pop band or person, but wasn't sure which. Knowing well that I don't tend to like pop music, I said, “Well, no.”

She proceeded to play a Kid Rock song to prove that it's worth liking. The class is a multimedia class, so students are encouraged to play music during class. The song sounded like country music to me.

That got me thinking about how out of touch I am with pop music. Is this Kid Rock a band or a person? (“Which one's Pink?”) And does Kid Rock—whether it be a they or a he—play rock music, as the name would suggest, or country music as the music itself would suggest? Was this country song a fluke? And why is it I had expected to hear hip hop when she'd play some Kid Rock music? With all this pop-rock / hip-hop fusion (“1991, always on the run!”) going on, can I be blamed for making a quick mental guess that Kid Rock was in fact a hip-hop / rock fusion group?

Later, I figured the name was not as ironic as I previously thought and that indeed Kid Rock was a person. I thought, “isn't Kid Rock that guy that Dustin listens to?” I asked Dustin and he said, “No, that's M-'n'-M.” I thought they were the same person. This M-'n'-M character goes by some other pop alias, I know that much.

The other day, Michelle and I saw a video by a band called Linkin Park, which were described as a Nu-Metal band. Nu-Metal they were, indeed. But I thought their band name should have been Metal Street Boys or better yet, Rage Street Boys.

The type of metal they were performing was the I yell into the microphone with great rage while my bassist rips it up—metal!! kind of metal.

Make the pain stop.