I didn't watch any TV between Wishbone and The West Wing. I didn't listen to any music on the radio beyond the oldies and public radio stations until I was a freshman in high school. Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, I've managed to develop a healthy appreciation of pop culture in my late teens and early twenties. I recently read somewhere else that someone hadn't grown up with pop music, she had grown into it.
I think part of the reason I enjoy Top 40, and hip-hop, and rock, and basically everything but heavy metal and country (there are some exceptions, of course) so much is that, no, the lyrics are not always searing commentaries on the vagaries of human existence and, yes, sometimes an artist will rhyme "baby," "day," and "pain," (but hey, it's slant rhyme), but in every song I like there's something that touches me. There's either the sound I can't get out of my head or that one lyric that makes me want to sing along in the car, or that makes my heart clench up.
Sometimes it just comes down to what makes you want to plug in your iPod and go jogging, or throw your hands up in the air and dance around while you're home for fall break and making cookies, or cry without a real reason. Sometimes even the tritest lyrics have a kernel of truth; that's how they get to be clichés.
(And then there's Coldplay. They constantly do all of the above to me, and yet I don't feel the need to defend them. There's substance in their lyrics, and they can sing too.)
I started thinking about this so much because of my family's Top 500 Songs compilation, and the fact that if we each made our own Top 500s they would be completely different lists, perhaps not even recognizable as related to the other, original list. Probably, this would be the most true of my list. I won't try and see--I don't have that kind of time--but here, without shame, are some lyrics in fairly mainstream songs that make me pause and think, or laugh.

"I throw my hands up in the air sometimes." "I think that she knows." "That boy is a monster; he ate my heart." "Well you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer." "Please, please, don't leave me." "I live by the river." "Oooh, you set my soul alight." "Life is a mystery." "I'd like to make myself believe that planet Earth turns slowly." "Can you meet me halfway, right at the borderline? That's where I'm gonna wait for you." "What we gonna have: dessert or disaster?" "If I don't say this now, I will surely break. [...] I'll look after you." "Why does love always feel like a battlefield? Guess you better go and get your armor." "Tell your boyfriend, if he says he's got beef, that I'm a vegetarian and I ain't fucking scared of him." "You try making me wait, but it feels all right as long as something's happening."


*"Dynamite," Taio Cruz; "Lovestoned," Justin Timberlake; "Monster," Lady Gaga; "Helter Skelter," The Beatles; "Please Don't Leave Me," P!nk; "London Calling," The Clash; "Supermassive Black Hole," Muse; "Like A Prayer," Madonna; "Fireflies," Owl City; "Meet Me Halfway," Black Eyed Peas; "Knock You Down," Keri Hilson; "Look After You," The Fray; "Battlefield," Jordin Sparks; "Don't Trust Me," 3OH!3; "Tribulations," LCD Soundsystem