Started out, hey cutie where're you from?

[koganbot]

Jukebox tracks coming too fast and furious. Katy Perry's "Waking Up In Vegas" is already done and reviewed, while I've only listened twice and haven't even gotten to the point of finding out if it's my hoped-for elaboration on Betty Hutton in The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek and Carrie Underwood in "Last Name." But the Jukebox blurbs reminded me that

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[skyecaptain]

I worry about "frightened youngster" tone, which is maybe another way of saying worrying about the zing first and the song second, but for the most part I've been fair. If anything, my dismissive numerical scores don't quite do justice to what I've actually written, e.g. a retarded The-Dream (and I meant that more literally than it probably came across, which might make me cringe more at having written it at all) is almost by definition more interesting than a 3. It's a 6 song, I think.

But when I'm out of my element (or just not trying hard enough) I can still write things that feel arbitrary and, worse, arbitrarily mean. In part it's the format (gunning for aphorisms frequently overlaps with gunning for zingers) but in part it's also just laziness. It's actually quite hard to write a good review that's dead-on in so little space, but it's a nice challenge and I tend to like the results in general. (I've also forgotten what it was like not to have the Jukebox in my life, just in terms of what I read every day. I wouldn't have ever heard, or heard of, probably 70% of these songs otherwise.)

[koganbot]

Well, there are plenty ways to be frightened as a critic - I'm someone who's often terrified of the reader - but what was on my mind with the Brooks & Dunn reviews was "Here's a way of living and a sensibility that isn't ours, so let's assume it has no value."* This is more likely to come from a young person's fear because young people's sensibilities and ways of living are still under construction, therefore countersensibilities are more of a threat.

I suppose if at some point it looks as if my sensibility is going six feet under, then I'll adopt the fear as an old person and become a curmudgeon.

*I don't mean one shouldn't judge other sensibilities, but you already know that.