Does Your London Bridge Go Down?

How come every time you come around my London, London bridge wanna go down?

If you're our age and don't have any teens or preteens around the house, you're wondering, "what the heck has the Curmudgeon been smoking?"

If you do have teens, then you know that's the refrain from the hit song "London Bridge" by Fergie (a.k.a. Stacie Ferguson), also the lead singer in the mega-group Black-Eyed Peas.

Our 11-year-old suddenly became quite interested in pop music a few months ago and now insists, along with his similarly infected 8-year-old brother, on listening to his favorite music while being shuttled around in the Curmudgeonmobile.

So we ride around, listening to the latest hits in rap, rock and pop on the top-20 channel on XM Radio. We have to say, many of the songs have their charm, which is a good thing as they rattle around in our brains for hours on end.

They also take some explaining. For example, Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous Girl" (the 11-year-old has quite a crush on Nelly) required an explanation of the meaning of promiscuous. (We said it's someone who has multiple boy or girlfriends.)

Then there's Chamillionaire and their song "Riding Dirty," which is about racial profiling.

We still haven't figured out exactly what it means to have one's London Bridge go down, but we have a sneaking suspicion it's not something we'd want to explain.

A lot of the songs, as with any generation, are pretty fluffy and meaningless, and easily confused. Like "Me 'n U" and "U and Dat." It appears songs have become text messages.

Unfortunately, many of today's songs, especially rap, are filled with profanity. The boys are not allowed to download the "explicit" versions, but they, of course, know the lyrics to them anyway.

And now we find some of these tunes creeping into our everyday conversation. Like Kanye West's "Golddigger". ("Have you met Stan's new girlfriend? I'm not saying she's a golddigger . . ."). Or Fort Minor's "Where'd You Go" (Curmudgeon to child returning from friend's house: "where'd you go? I missed you so.")

Of course, it's only a matter of time--if we continue to show any interest in today's pop music, the boys will soon gravitate to something else. We just hope it's not the Greatest Hits of the '70's!