I've always been amazed by the success and longevity of the Beach Boys, considering that all of their songs were about cars, surfing, and, to a lesser extent, girls. Many of their car songs, in fact were crazy strings of geeky automotive lyrics involving "four-on-the-floor", and my favorite "four-speed dual quad posi-traction 409". I have no clue what any of those things are (except the "four-speed", I think I can take a guess on that one), but I'm sure they made those gigantic cars with the huge fins zip along.

The really amazing thing in my mind is that we've never seen anything like that since then. Of all the fads and trends, there has never been a band that has had a long, successful career singing about popular teen pastimes. Extreme sports, for example, were extreme-ly popular a few years ago, and while a lot of bands played music to appeal to kids who street luged or paraglided, none of them actually sang about street luging or paragliding. I think there's a real market here...

jump out of a plane with a board on my feet,
slide down a mountain on a plastic sheet,
soup up my car with those spinning rims,
fly off of my bike and break my shins

So catchy.