I've built my whole life around loving music. I'm a writer for 'Rolling Stone,' so I am constantly searching for new bands and soaking up new sounds.

Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years, the MP3-playing alarm clock, I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning.

'Revenge' is a shameless soap in the style of Eighties shoulder-pad slap-offs like 'Dallas,' 'Dynasty' and 'Falcon Crest.' Yet there's no wink-wink camp.

It was R.E.M. who showed other Eighties bands how to get away with ignoring the rules - they lived in some weird town nobody never heard of, they didn't play power chords, they probably couldn't even spell 'spandex.' All they had was songs.

But MTV relishes its vestigial role as a star maker, so every year it puts all its clout into making the VMAs the biggest, splashiest, loudest show-biz extravaganza of the year, honoring all this music for existing, after a year of paying barely any attention to it.

Our amour fou with 'The Sopranos' is headed for long-term parking, like so many of its most memorable characters. We'll never see a show like this again.

'So You Think You Can Dance' comes on as a high-minded leap up the evolutionary ladder from other reality shows - on this one, you're supposed to learn something, and the guest judges are fellow dance professionals rather than actual celebrities.