So somebody I work with insists on blasting the local pop-country radio station whenever we're in the car. For the last month and a half, for two days of every week, I spend a good hour listening to top 40 pop country. Some of the songs are really terribly produced, some of them are really well-produced. Some use obviously canned lines written and are recorded on second-rate digital instruments, some of them rely way too heavily on auto-tune, some of them are lazy. But others are beautifully crafted, utilize super-talented session musicians, and have hooks for days. And I'll be damned if it all doesn't satisfy some heretofore unrecognized craving of mine. Every song is about livin' in the backwoods and driving in trucks and falling in love next to the quarry in the middle of summer and drinking watery beer and yadda yadda. And they've engineered it down to a science, like the science of simple pleasures, or the science of small-town nostalgia. To the point that even if you've never lived in a small town, you start to think, "yeah, I do want to sing Willie Nelson songs down at the ol' bonfire, and then wake up early and work really hard in the field and then fall in love with the boss's offspring and then fight and make up and fall in love again and start a family and on the weekends, yeah, I want to front a cover band that makes people dance at the local dive bar."

I'd never turn to this station by my own free will, but I'll be goddamned if I haven't come to really appreciate the times when this guy turns on the radio and tunes in and turns it up way too loud. It's really satisfying, and it makes me realize how much I willfully block out for no other reason than I've arbitrarily decided certain things are cool and valid and certain things are the opposite.

It's worth walking out of your comfort zone every once in a while, you might find some really neat shit.