I love music. Love it. I've always got music playing everywhere. I have about a hundred CD's in the car and another 600 in the house, plus another five or six hundred songs on my iTunes I've downloaded here and there.

I was going through my library a little and thought it'd be fun to do a little Thursday Thirteen:

UPDATE: Alright, I can see I'm going to have to 'splain this a little better, especially after Joe's last comment. You see, these songs do not represent my core tastes in music. These are songs that are on my playlist despite the fact that they don't represent my core listening tastes. So, Joe, having seen your playlist 20, I think we do have a lot in common, but I just happen to ALSO have these little tidbits on it as well. We clear? Okay.

Thirteen songs you didn't know were on my playlist:

13. Then He Kissed Me: The Crystals - This is my very absolutely most super favorite oldie ever. I actually first heard this song as a cover by KISS (Then SHE Kissed Me) when I was eleven. Loved the song then, but when I heard the original, it was perfect.

12. Pepper: Butthole Surfers - I don't mind the sun sometimes and the images it shows. I have no idea why I like this song. It's weird and very negative, but I love it.

11. Walk on Water: Men Without Hats - I think by the end of the 80's, I was the only guy left in the US listening to Men Without Hats. Pop Goes the World was one of those albums that wasn't deep or all that original or anything very special, yet I love every song on it and played it for hours (I was nineteen at the time.) Walk on Water is probably my favorite song on it. It's quite derivative, yet it makes my toes tap.

10. Beautiful: Christina Aguilera - This song to me is a gorgeous, simple work of art. I don't care what anyone says, Aguilera's voice is lovely and rich, and the message is real. Sure, it's just a song, but it's a beautiful one. Another song from the same album, The Voice Within, is also on my playlist. I don't know any other songs from the album.

9. Boat on the River: Styx - Styx was number one for me and my best friend Devin back in the late 70's. We liked so many of their semi-prog songs, but besides Come Sail Away, the one song that stuck with me was Boat on the River. I always remembered it and to this day find myself humming it here and there. If my kids heard it today, they'd probably wonder why it sounds so familiar. I sang it to all of them when they were babies falling asleep in my arms.

8. Piss on the Wall: J. Geils Band - All of my friends were listening to this album, but while they were listening to Centerfold and jerking off to pics of Charlene Tilton, I was listening to this song. It's mildly funny, stupid, insipid, and artistically void, but that's what makes it work.

7. LDN: Lily Allen - My buddy Zen turned me on to this, posting it a ways back on his blog. I fell in love right away. She's very funny and clever, and the song's just perfect.

6. Whenever, Wherever: Shakira - Okay, this chick is scary. Over the top on the sexy, which is just not my style. Yet when this song pops up, I can't help put do a little shoulder wiggle along with it. Don't know why. Don't care.

5. The Nth Degree: Morningwood - This is a song I overheard while helping my wife shop for shoes. I'm sitting there in Lady Foot Locker, trying to look like I'm not about to die of abject boredom, when I hear this song pop up on the shop's radio. As I'm listening I'm thinking, "I shouldn't like this. It's droll and smarmy, snappy pop." Yet I couldn't help myself. Off to iTunes that very evening.

4. Tapestry: Carole King - Maybe it's just me, but often it seems my favorite songs on albums are the secondary hits, not the ones that get all the radio play. The album "Tapestry" is one of the primary sounds of my young life, after my parent's divorce. Carole King was a voice of comfort and love, but also melancholy and uncertainty, a reflection of my conflicted state of mind, I'm sure. But it was this sad, sad song about her travel through her own tapestry of life that always touched me most.

3. Odyssey: KISS - In the early 80's, the "Hottest Band in the World" had become a lump of ice swirling about the rim of a flushed toilet. After the sucky "Unmasked," this dedicated KISS fan picked up "Music from The Elder." WTF? Was it a movie? I told mom I wanted to see the movie. She told me I was crazy. But she bought me the album. I think it's because she was hauling me to a Kenny Rogers concert that evening. Anyway, I actually liked much of the album. The voice overs and so-called storyline are smarmy and ridiculous, but some of the songs are actually quite good. The only song anyone's probably heard from this album is "A World Without Heroes" which I believe has remained part of their concert repertoire. However, I've always loved Odyssey, because I see a small group of people crossing the ocean in a sailing ship, heading into the unknown, yet content never to return to the darkness of their old world.

2. Toxic: Britney Spears - I will not apologize for loving this song. I will even admit to attending a Britney Spears concert, though it was under duress (9 year-old daughter's birthday present.) It was actually a decent show, though nothing special. Anyway, there is just something about this minor-key melody that makes it a nice ear-worm, the kind that you like ringing about in your head for a little while. Not to mention the video with Brit in that bang-up mad-awesome deep red hairdo. Um, but yeah, I like the song.

1. Duality: Slipknot - Ordinarily I dislike groups with this much evil in the persona. I know it's just stage stuff, whatever, and I know how it feels (Can you say Ozzy Osbourne?) but it's just too much. When I started hearing the song Duality, and seeing the video on Fuse, I tried to pretend I wasn't liking it. I held out for weeks. Finally I downloaded the damn song, because I just had to.

So, what surprises do you have on your playlist, hmmm?