Sending out an SOS

What is it with The Police anyway?  Everywhere I go lately, every place I find myself sitting or running or driving I can't escape their music.  Don't misunderstand me; I like this band, always have, but come ON, how many times can we hear these same damn songs over and again?  Here's an example: Laura and I were at Starbucks, and we heard "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and I mentioned that I can't stand this song because it finds its way into the feedback loop of my brain and refuses to give up until I feel I'm going perfectly mad.  She said hers was "Message in a Bottle" and less than an hour later, there it was, playing at the gym.  There are many songs like this of course, and my most recent nemesis is "Unwritten" from the Pantene commercials.  I don't know who sings this song and I don't care because I've never liked it, but it gets into my head and won't stop.  

This is a superfluous and nilly rant, of course, but the popular music canon is one that irritates me almost endlessly.  As I mentioned, I like The Police, and I don't mind Sting most of the time, but I simply cannot fathom how they are considered one of the greatest bands in rock history.  Their songs sound all vaguely the same; they're simple and reggae-ish, and obviously catchy - but does this make them part of the elite?  The answer to this calls into question larger issues of this distinction, like why Led Zeppelin gets the honor of being the greatest band ever when I cannot suffer even two minutes of any single one of their songs.  Robert Plant is screechy and incoherent, and I simply don't get it.  I've tried, but I don't.  I also don't get the status of a band like Nirvana either, now that I'm on the subject.  Of course I like them and always have, but theirs, like the other aforementioned bands, are never on my top ten playlist, or even my top 100.  Their place in the rock and roll canon baffles me; I understand that bands such as these are groundbreakers and changed the music scene in some key ways, but just because they did it doesn't create legendary status in its own right except for this fact.  I can think of a dozen bands that came after Nirvana that I like considerably more and just because Nirvana may or may not have paved the way doesn't make them inferior any more than it makes Nirvana kings of the hill.

The same argument can be (and has been) made about The Beatles.  I grew up on this music, love it, appreciate it, but even my adoration for these records does not permit me to think of them as the greatest band in the history of music.  Maybe most influential, but we can't ignore the fact that a reasonable percentage of the Beatles' library of tunes is just plain weird or even terrible.  

But it makes me smile anyway when I hear my daughter going about her daily life humming "Dear Prudence" or "Across the Universe" like they are her own.