Hello I'm back after a few months of Netlessness. If we could summarize what really gets under the most folks skin, it's: "just about everything that got heavy rotation on AM radio in the 70's, with strings". I see it as a hellish collision of lyricists stretching (past) the limits of their talents to accommodate the new freedoms and pretensions(Having My Baby, McArthur F*****g Park, certainly anything by N Diamond, and the aforementioned "Timothy, where on earth did you go? God why don't I know? (burp)"--all songs with highly unmemorable melodies, with these arrangers --for all I know, maybe it was just one guy--who got ahold of the songs and added these perky little hooks with flutes and strings and bang, you right away (a) hated the thing and (b) could NOT get it out of your cranium. They had bad melodies, worse lyrics but did they have HOOKS!

Fortunately, the whole top 40 thing sort of died , but unfortunately the bad 70's bubblegum music torch has been picked up by the so-called "new country" stations. A place where "that's my girl, my whole world but that ain't my truck" is one of the better entries. Almost anything sung by a man in this format seems to be a golly whiz paean to faithful devotion to his gosh darn best gal pal in the whole world under God and the Stars and Stripes. Makes me want to--oh, never mind.

Bill C