So this is the last week of blogs apparently. And I know that all of you faithful readers (sarcasm) will be so disappointed when this ends. But, in the spirit of it being the last blog, I’ve decided to throw a pretty huge curveball. Instead of doing weird indie/emo music, I’m gonna change it up. Today, we’ll be talking about pop songs that I love. It might get a little embarrassing for me, but who cares?

I can’t mention pop music without mentioning my girl, Taylor Swift. From an objective standpoint, her music is actually really good. I mean, Red is a baller album. Specifically, the one song off it that I love is I Knew You Were Trouble.  See? I told you that this would get embarrassing. But I swear that it’s actually a good song. The lyrics of “And when I fell hard you took a step back without me,” are really good. There’s actually like metaphors and stuff in the song. Not what you’d expect from an average pop star, but that’s why T. Swift is my girl. Also, we are just going to pretend that Shake It Off never happened. Like, never.

Alright, now for one REALLY out of left field. R. Kelly. Yep. The one that pees on people and sleeps with underage girls. I love R. Kelly. I mean, just look at Ignition Remix. First off, the song itself comes right after the original mix of Ignition on the album, and it’s not at the end like normal albums. Right smack in the middle. Let’s talk about how weird R. Kelly is, because that’s why I love him. The notable lyrics from Ignition Remix are “The way you do the things you do remind me of my Lexus coup,” because it is just weird as hell.  “Stroke it round and round to the remix. We just thuggin it out,” is also amazing because in this song, R. Kelly is having sex and “thuggin it out” to his own song. R. Kelly is so into the remix that he is just gonna listen to it all day. I could talk for hours about how weird R. Kelly is, but I’ll just let this explain it.

I could also talk about Matchbox 20 for a few hours. This one has an explanation though. My mom was their biggest fan when I was growing up. So when they put out North, specifically She’s So Mean. Honestly, I should hate this song. The lyrics are your stereotypical “This girl sucks but I love her because she’s bad” stuff. And it doesn’t even make sense considering most of the members of the band have been married for a long time. But I’d be wrong to say that this song isn’t an amazing jam. Even on North, it’s probably the worst song. Does that mean I play it the least? Hell no.

You know how everyone either loves or hates country music? I’m in the middle. There’s good country and there’s awful country, and it’s hard to find the good stuff. But, you know what is an amazing song? Wagon Wheel. I posted the Darius Rucker version because the original version of the song didn’t get hugely popular, but they’re both amazing. I don’t know what it is about this song, but it’s super good. It tells a really good story that isn’t about drinking beer and having sex in a domestically-made truck, so it’s already way different than every other country song. This song was so good that my band that I played in during high school had our own cover of this song. If you want to have a funny time, watch a bunch of teenagers mosh to a song they don’t realize is Wagon Wheel.

So there’s four of my favorite pop songs. Most of them became popular recently, and everyone knows Ignition. So, go ahead and judge me. Or, post what your guilty pleasure pop songs are in the comments.

This has been The Internet by Jake Foose. Party on, Garth.