Even a three-year old can tell you that music today sucks. Jacob Edward Smith reviews selected albums from his daddy’s SD card.

Adele – 21

I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea what she’s singing about, but her voice makes me want to get old enough for someone to explain it to me real quick. She’s even prettier than Miss Stacy at my daycare! I didn’t even know that was possible! This one gets heavy rotation on Discovery Kids My Musical mp3 Boombox, that’s for sure. She can sing me to sleep through the twin audio speakers any night of the week.

Lunch Money – Original Friend

Yeah, my boombox came with 20 “kids songs” preloaded, but tunes like “This Old Man” and “Bit by Bit” are a little beneath my more advanced tastes. Lunch Money, for example, doesn’t feel the need to talk down to me just because I’m still not “technically” potty trained (I can do it; I just don’t feel like it). The songs are clever and fun, they don’t annoy my parents so much that they make me put headphones in the headphone jack, and I don’t even care that one of the songs is about a dollhouse!

The Decemberists – The King Is Dead

After what my friend Hermione told me about this band at daycare a few weeks ago, I was pretty excited to find out Dad had put them on the SD card that expands the paltry 128MB of internal memory storage up to 8GB. Unfortunately, they seem to have moved out of their “songs about man-eating whales” phase. On the bright side, I learned how to count to ten by pressing the big yellow skip button through every tune, so there’s that. Less big words, Mr. Meloy, and more whales, please.

The Protomen (self-titled)

Now this is more like it! High production value, a singer who can hit higher notes than I can after an accident on the playground see-saw, and ROBOTS! Even better: ROBOTS FIGHTING OTHER ROBOTS! Seriously, what more could you want in an album, aside from maybe robots fighting aliens? Or robots fighting pirates. Or robots fighting pirate robots. I just wish I could read the titles of the songs in the 1.5-inch LCD display, ‘cause I bet they’re AWESOME.

Owl City – All Things Bright and Beautiful

Seriously, I’ve had mobiles that play better music than this. I’d rather sit in my own boom-boom for an hour than be subjected to such garbage. That’s right, Dad, potty training is officially cancelled.

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