My 9-year-old daughter’s favorite TV show is Hannah Montana (starring Miley Cyrus). Sometimes I sit on the couch with her and half-watch it while I read a comic book. From what I’ve picked up, it’s about a middle-school girl who is a rock star, but nobody at the school knows. A Clark Kent / Superman deal. This is fertile agar for all sorts of screwball plots. My guilty pleasure is that I enjoy the infectious bubblegum music she performs.
But I don’t feel as guilty now that I’ve learned that one of my cultural heroes, Irwin Chusid, also likes her music, and approves of the Hannah Montana Soundtrack.
As a 55-year-old AARP card-carrying male with a Seussian distance from kids (“You have ’em, I’ll entertain ’em”) and 30+ years airtime here at the hotbed of broadcast anarchy, I’m not Radio Disney’s target demo. (On my 49th birthday, I sighed, “Advertisers no longer care about me”—then realized: When did they?) Hannah’s lyrics evoke the hopes, dreams, and rockstar fantasies of prepubescent girls, but the music is captivating to these admittedly jaded ears. It’s everything catchy pop should be: frothy, harmonic, propulsive, memorable—that is, it’s formulaic. And irresistible. She’s The Monkees in a pleated mini.
