This is how it works. I worked in radio for eight years, and I know, so you can trust me on this.

Top 40 music is not, per say, music. It isn't made up of "songs" written by "songwriters" with the intentions of artistic expression. Top 40 music is, in fact, mechanically designed in labs by scientists for the flatly obvious purpose of making it's listeners stupider. The albums and singles themselves are actually produced by evil music industry cyborgs. The scientists don't want to expose themselves to the music itself, of course. It would make them stupid. It's kinda the same principle by which a drug-dealer won't mess with his own stash. You don't want to end up hooked on something that you know is bad for you. Leave the product for the suckers.

It's kind of a circular process, but it works. It works all too well. Like this:

• You listen to Top 40 pop music on the radio.


• You realize that it's stupid but you keep listening because the marketing department manages to convince you that, if you are to be cool, you have to keep listening.


• The sounds and messages in Top 40 music kill your brain cells.


• Once enough brain cells are dead, you start to enjoy pop music.


• Eventually you find yourself dressing like, talking like, and otherwise emulating the performers behind the Top 40 Music you've been hearing.


• At this point, you are a willing and happy consumer of the CDs produced by the Top 40 Music-Industrial Compound. At this point, you belong to them.

The dissemination through Top 40 music that makes you stupider is not hidden in subliminal messages. Ooooooh, no. That would be too obvious, wouldn't it? You'd be expecting that. No, Top 40 dumbs you down with superliminal messages. It's kind of a Purloined Letter situation. The dumb messages are right there, right on top, in the very lyrics to the songs themselves. Once they've got you to the point where you're sitting in your car, happily singing along with these superliminal messages, that's it. It's over. They own your ass.

This is on my mind today because I had to have some work done on my car yesterday and I had to drive a loaner to work and back today. The loaner didn't have a CD player or even a cassette deck. Just an AM/FM radio. In the twenty-odd minutes it took me to drive home from work I was assaulted by the stupidest, most blatantly superliminal idiocy you can imagine. The only radio station that comes in clearly in these mountains is a super-powered regional Top 40 station… so they had me right where they wanted me.

I was able to fight it off, though. I was able to keep it from making me too dumb… or at least not much dumber than I already am… by white-knuckle-gripping the steering wheel and screaming "NOOOOOO!" at the top of my lungs while the radio played.

The first song I heard was the new Justin Timberlake single in which he repeatedly insists that he's "bringing sexy back." At first I welcomed this as good news since I haven't seen Sexy in the popular culture in ages. Have you noticed, like me, that Sexy has been missing? Where's she been? Oh, I've seen Skanky. She's everywhere. So is Trashy. I've also noticed that Empty and Freaky are on TV and in the news constantly … but Sexy has been missing in action for a long time.

Then I actually listened to the lyrics that Justin was singing and realized that it was undeniable superliminal manipulation at it's best:

Them other boys don't know how to act
I think it's special whats behind your back
So turn around and I'll pick up the slack.

Wait a minute. That's not Sexy. Justin fooled me. That's not Sexy… that's Stupid. Justin is actually bringing Stupid back. But that's not really accurate, either… because Stupid hasn't been gone. Stupid has been here all along. What Justin is actually doing is Bringing Stupid Further.

I'm not sure why the scientists didn't simply have Justin be honest and admit that it's Stupid and not Sexy that he's celebrating. There've been a TON of hit songs that have celebrated stupidity… such as this one and this one and this one. It's every easy and very simple to have a hit song singing about stupidity. Justin's handlers should have simply been honest about what Justin was actually doing.

The next "song" was called Buttons and I have a hard time keeping straight exactly what the "band" behind it is called… but it apparently has something to do with dolls and with Vincent Pastore's character on The Sopranos.

The lyrics to "Buttons" are, partially, as follows:

I'm telling you loosen up my buttons baby (Uh huh)
But you keep fronting (Uh huh)
Saying what you going do to me (Uh huh)
But I ain't seen nothing (Uh huh)

Apparently a song about sexual frustration. The singer wants the person she's singing to to come through with a promised carnal exchange.

Now, the grammar is awful, so there's that. But what's worse is the pronunciation. These women slur their words like the drunks you might find leaving a club fifteen minutes after closing time.

The last two lines quoted above actually come out like this:

"Sane Whachoo Gandooda Me,
Buh-Ah-Ain-Seen-Nu-in."

It's hard to hear the song without imagining the guy she's singing to fending off the advances of the local drunken slut.

And this is a HIT RECORD! This is what people WANT to hear!

Next came a cross-over country hit by the band Rascal Flatts. I don't know if this country cross-over hit is purely a regional thing or if it's getting national Top 40 airplay… but I do know that it's obnoxious. It's four or four-and-a-half minutes of this loser whining like a... well, like a big Pastore... about how miserable he is because the woman he loves left him. He whines and cries and bitches and moans and whimpers and blubbers about how lonesome he is… and, to add insult to injury, he seems to be insisting in the chorus that his woman left him because he wouldn't express his feelings to her.

Great. She couldn't get him to express his feelings and I can't get him to stop.

Then, I suppose because four brand-new Top 40 hits would be just toooooo much, the radio station threw one at me with the old school flavor by playing Kid Rock's Cowboy. In this masterpiece, Kid Rock expresses that he wants to

Start an escort service
For all the right reasons.

At this point I was literally pounding on my forehead with my fist to try to keep the stupidity from seeping into my brain and causing me to veer off the road into a ditch simply because I'd become to stupid to drive.

So what are the right reasons for starting an escort service, Kid? What, exactly, would be the wrong reasons for starting an escort service? Has there been a rash of escort services that were started for patently and obviously wrong reasons? Has someone, for instance, started an escort service for theological studies… or for hovercraft maintenance… or for martial arts training?

At that point, thankfully, I made it home.

So be careful. Be careful driving around out there with the radio on.

Don't say I didn't warn you.