There is a radio in the bathroom of my all-girls hallway. It is turned on roughly 24 hours a day, quietly during the night time, but nevertheless in my sleep I can hear the lyrical genius of Eminem (‘If she ever tries to ‘ leave again / I’m-a tie her to the bed and set the house on fire’) playing from the bathroom.

It was put there by my resident assistant with a warning written on it: ‘Do Not Remove, Or I Will Find You,’ and consequently I hear the same songs on repeat whenever I’m on my floor, in addition to whatever party I may be at and from whichever car may be driving by me as I walk around campus. Here are a few examples of ‘lyrics’ of the ‘musicians’ praised endlessly in our pop-crazed American culture, in case you live in a cave.

‘Sun-kissed skin / so hot we’ll melt your Popsicle.’

‘Lose your mind / lose it now / lose your clothes / in the crowd! ‘ Take it off! Right now! Take it off! Right now! Everybody take it off!’

And the deepest of all, ‘I wanna be a billionaire so fricking bad.’

I realize these annoyingly catchy songs with addictive and simple rhymes are effective at filling the unbearable silences that make five seconds of our lives seem awkward. They are great at creating atmospheres where listeners want to do exactly what the lyrics want the audience to do, especially at a sweaty frat house where you would like nothing better than to just ‘take it off.’

As college students, we may have had some fun times to these meaningless songs, and these songs will (hopefully) have no significant influence on our lives. We understand that in another month there will be yet another addition to the radio singing about sexy chicks and making love in the club. But never mind that college students are getting lyrical nonsense drilled into their heads. What worries me is that this is the music of not only college students, but also 13-year-olds.

Let me ask you: as a teeny-bopper, do you remember being urged to strip in a hole in a wall, that happens to be a dirty free-for-all? Maybe. Maybe we were listening to absolute scum of music subconsciously and we didn’t realize its deleterious effects. Maybe we just heard the same lyrics over and over again so many times that we became calcified to their deceptive influence on our lives. But that’s exactly my point.

I don’t have much interaction with preteens ‘ in fact, I know very few people below the age of 18 ‘ but listening to these same songs for the 100th time today made me think about what is considered normal or admirable for the middle school crowd. It made me want to approach eyelinered, Abercrombie-clad tweens and tell them that acting like Ke won’t get them far in life and that their teenage dream can be so much more than letting a boy touch them in their skin-tight jeans.

Even if the preteens of today truly aren’t being adversely affected in some way by a music market kept running by a monopolistic industry comprised of four main record labels ‘ Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, EMI and Sony Music Entertainment ‘ it is still disheartening to think that a song about ‘sippin’ sizzurp in my ride’ dominates the top charts of the year, no matter how catchy the song may be initially.

The majority of people reading this may wonder what kind of frigid nun is writing this column. In fact, I have managed to shock myself with the level of conservative over-analysis I have induced on something as common and normal as pop music, as I am usually a free-spirited person. I just don’t believe that going away to college is a free ticket to melt your brain (how ironic) and I don’t believe that entertainment is ‘just entertainment’ for those in society who aren’t old enough to decipher what’s intentionally being sold to them.

So yes, let’s have a round of applause for Katy Perry. After all, she’s only an entertainer; she’s just a California Gurl living up to her high standards; she’s only blatantly targeting teenage girls with moral-induced lyrics so that she can make a profit. After all, she did win a noble MTV award for her exceptional singing talent and, come on, she’s not the one who decides what she sings, it’s her producers and lyricists! Good job, Ms. Perry, good job.