What the Kids Are Listening to These Days

I've been listening to the Dandy Warhols' Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, which I just got yesterday, and while I haven't listened to the entire album yet, so far it really kinda kicks ass.

Which leads me to thinking... I think this may be the first time in my life when I've actually liked music that was cool and popular while it was actually still cool and popular. (The Dandy Warhols are cool and popular, right? I certainly keep hearing about them everywhere.)

See, I spent my teenage years mostly listening to bagpipe music and the Wrath of Khan soundtrack on continuous loop, because I wouldn't be caught dead being shallow and ordinary enough to listen to the kind of music the popular kids listened to. When I started college, thank goodness, I finally got over myself and discovered a heartfelt liking for the music of the 80's just in time for it to start giving way to the music of the 90's. I didn't care much for the whole grunge thing and still honestly do not understand the appeal of Nirvana, but I was finally starting to relax and sort of accept the whole 90's sensibility just about the time it, too, was on its way out. But the music of the 00's, as a whole, is actually proving strangely agreeable to me. To be honest, I'm not sure quite how I feel about that. I've never been accused of having cool tastes in music before, at least not for any mainstream definition of "cool."

Also, bizarrely, I find that the older I get, the more acceptable I find Heavy Metal. Is it just me, or is that completely backwards?