TaylorSwift.com

Sunday night, the 2013 Grammy Awards will renew the now-impossible task of representing mainstream America's tastes and remaining relevant to those who care enough to seek music beyond an FM dial. All parties will inevitably leave feeling disconnected from the wider culture. Who can act as a true barometer of what is good and what is not, and help us find some sensible common ground? City Pages' newest cultural arbiter: my mother.

As is now the established practice, my mom was presented with the nominees in ten of the more relevant categories, and asked to choose some winners and losers. The following ensued:

See Also:
My mom reviews Pitchfork's top tracks of 2012

Photo by John Londono

We just wrapped another year of wall-to-wall critics' lists, and the Pitchfork staff provided a carefully curated subset of hip music of last year. How does this music sit with the rest of the population? To  partly answer that question, we asked someone untainted by current musical trends -- my mom.

Born in 1947, my mom is now 65 years old. She saw the Beatles' premiere on the Ed Sullivan Show as a high school senior, and danced to the the Kinks and the Rascals at college frat parties. She dug the Isley Brothers. She was born into the Golden Era, but appreciates random contemporary music like Norah Jones, or Arcade Fire. In other words, she's with it enough to know good music when she hears it, but old enough to not know what the hell Pitchfork is, and to not care what anyone else thinks.

Per a technique popularized by Michelangelo Matos at Idolator a few years back, she was presented with Pitchfork's Top Ten tracks of 2012, and below are her immediate reactions, verbatim, minus a few f-bombs. ("I am a lady, after all. And it's your fault I use that word so much, Justin.")

See Also:
My mom reviews the Grammy Awards 2013 nominees
50 awesome concert photos from 2012