I didn't get an occasional obsession. I became obsessed with every genre I explored and would buy everything I could get my hands on. Moreover, I never lose the interest. I still love 50s music, still listen to Bob Wills, still like electronic new wave and industrial. I have all this stuff ripped onto a terabyte portable drive that I can carry with me anywhere and listen to in my car. Everything from avant-garde to ancient Hebrew hymns to Top 40 AM hits of the 60s and 70s. Anything I want.

Sometimes I listen to the radio while driving around and if I dial past a station and BTO's "Blue Collar" starts playing, I might just let it play and think back to those days. But it's not something I listen to everyday year after year. Mozart? Yes. BTO? No. If you're the opposite, that's fine, but would it kill you to branch out a little?

As for discovering Justin Bieber--all the genres I explored had substance. He doesn't. You don't explore mainstream pop, you learn to tune it out so it doesn't drive you insane. For some incredible inane reason, he remains highly popular with young, white females going into their 20s--something really wrong there--so I have to get used to tuning him out. He apparently is not going to go away. Which only shows how little choice there is today.