That’s right, Cory and I have been e-mailing all morning about America’s Next Top Model (we watched at separate times since he had band practice last night and have thus been catching up on our thoughts regarding the episode). Sorry for outing you Cory, but people have to know about your ANTM habit.

Anyway, some of those e-mails also involved a Timbaland quote from a recent New York Times Sunday magazine on "The Sound: The songs that define Right Now". In the piece the interviewer asked Timbaland about what kind of music he likes:

I asked him what he likes.

'' 'O Brother Where Art Thou?' he quickly answered. ''I was at the Trump in New York, and my assistant Mike was cutting my hair. I was watching 'O Brother.' I was laughing my butt off. And the song came on -- 'I am a man of constant sorrow . . . ' -- and I was like, 'This song is hot.' Next thing you know, I bought the CD and I would bump it in my car just the way it was. People would look at me like, This dude gotta be crazy. No, I wasn't, because this record gonna sell about 10 million. And what happened? It sold 10 million!'' (It sold 6.6 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan.)

''The best music right now is country music,'' he went on. ''The old country music, the old bluegrass stuff -- the lyrics in that stuff are incredible. And the damn melodies? Think about Bonnie Raitt. She's country, right? She made the illest song ever, 'I Can't Make You Love Me.' '' He sang me a line: ''Turn down the lights, turn down the bed/Turn down these voices inside my head.''

Now, why can't modern radio programmers think this way? Why do corporations such as Clear Channel insist on just recycling the same old sounds? Cory made a good point in an e-mail:

"It's a shame that programmers don't play stuff like The Flaming Lips, RADIO4, and The Polyphonic Spree. Music in commercials has been such a big boost for sales, but radio programmers somehow didn't get the memo. Radio should be about people saying, "yeah they're playing that song...I love this" "who is this" "it's from that TV commercial", etc.."

As such, even though I'm happy when a band such as Jet does get some radio play and even though I've yet to become tired of "Hey Ya" (Lord knows I've tried to get tired of it, but I just can't), there's still such a dearth of fresh new sounds on your radio dial.

Why do I even bother listening to the radio? Because A) I want to know what the 'kids' are into - or rather, what's being fed to them and B) every now and then I hear something great and it makes me happy and it reminds me of being in grade school or junior high and feeling euphoric when I "discovered" a new artist that I like. Perhaps I'm just stupid, but I still hold out hope for a radio revival.

Somewhere, somehow, it's got to be in the mix.