I have some strange and fairly particular things that I tend to like in a pop songs: I'm more interested in lyrics than in music and production (though those are important, of course), and I'm sort of obsessively attuned to unusual inflection in lyrical phrases. I recognize my limitations. I'm a writer, and I've learned through sad experiences with the violin and trumpet, that I am seriously not a musician. Words make sense to me in a way notes don't. I appreciate my friends who have been able to sit down with me and explain what's happening musically. And as a result, I've really been enjoying reading The Singles Jukebox.
It's not that I love every particular song the blog takes on, though the panelists' take on "The Girl and the Robot" was pretty rad. It's not a place I'm going to find out, necessarily, exactly what I should be listening to. But I'm enjoying going there to be unsettled. The thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-pop-song approach is helping me listen better, more critically, and for different things.