I take solace in shitty music.

I have a new nightly ritual. I have an embarrassing amount of shitty music, and I play it every night. Yeah, I still have my nightly classical music ritual... that comes later on. The shitty music is more late-night blog-checking homework-avoiding music.

And I rock the fuck out. Oh my god, do I rock out. I turn off my last.fm scrobbler so nobody will ever know what's being blared through my speakers, and I rock out. Dancing, head-banging, air guitar, singing into the hairbrush, sliding across my hardwood floors in my socks... whatever the cliché "dance like no one's watching" action is, I probably perform it nightly. It's not even music! It's ear candy, with "doo doo doo"s and breakdowns where the lead singer talks, chanting that turns into a crowd chanting (cue the fist pumps), poorly performed drum fills... it's not music, it's not art. It's musical fluff. These "musicians" are purely entertainment that's spoon-fed to the public through popular radio, tabloids, and hype that they cannot possibly live up to.

And I eat it up. I dig in with an embarrassing amount of vigor.

The thing is that I pride myself on my taste in music. I have a very diverse musical taste, and I like good music. I like music with a beat, music with a riff, music with a message, music that's really poetry, music that's built well, complete with an exposition, rising action, a climax, and falling action. Musical trilogies? Concept albums? Bring 'em on. I love it.

Even artists like Kanye West are ones that I flaunt. I am unashamed of the fact that I love Kanye West. He needs an attitude adjustment more than 98% of artists out there, but he's much like Muhammad Ali -- he talks shit, but he backs it up. He's fucking awesome, and I will defend him, because he is awesome.

And then there are my deep dark secrets: the music that I acquire and burn onto CDs that are labeled things like "Eric Clapton's Greatest Hits" and "The Best of Yes," so as to conceal the fact that I actually listen to this musical bullshit.

I don't know why, really. I shouldn't be ashamed of anything I listen to. It's popular music. I'm definitely not the only one who listens to this music. I just can't bring myself to admit that I like, listen to, own anything by these people. They are stricken from my iPod and my Last.fm. Only a select few know that I publicly hate and privately love a few of these artists.

The thing is, though, I take solace in the fact that it's mine. I know for a fact that the album I'm listening to right now is so terrible, so awful, that not a single one of my friends owns the whole thing. Aside from me. I'm the only person that I know that owns this album and has listened to the whole thing over ten times. And I'm okay with it.

I just won't admit it.