I will admit it. One of my guiltiest guilty pleasures is The X Factor. It is essentially the British version of American Idol. It is awful, but I love it.

When it was announced that the 2008 winner would sing a cover of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah”, I thought the situation couldn’t get any worse.

It just did.

It has been announced that the 2009 winner will sing a cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”.

I could not believe my ears.

When I eventually believed them, I wanted to eat them in a fit of pure, undiluted fury.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” is one of my favorite songs. I am against cover versions in (almost) every shape and form. The original is the best. Unless you can do something imaginative with the original (listen to Taken by Trees’ version of “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, for example), then leave it as it is. There is nothing about The X Factor that could possibly be considered original. Take it from someone who knows.

I could list all the things that are wrong with this choice, but I will start with the most obvious. One: the original version is brilliant and you should never mar brilliance. Two: why not pick an original song for the winner? At least then it can stand as a song in its own right. Can they not afford songwriters in this poor economic climate? Three: one of the contestants, an admittedly talented guy named Joe, already sang this song (and is favored to win, apparently). Does anything scream favoritism louder than that?

I will end this post with a solemn plea. Please buy the original version of “Don’t Stop Believin’” from iTunes during the week before Christmas. In the name of good taste, good music and all that is holy, buy “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Please.

The phrase “no homo” (signifying that the user isn’t gay) is used often in music now, especially in heavily auto-tuned rap cameos appearing in otherwise generic pop songs, but it still makes me laugh every time I hear it. Most of the time, the words are used after either the most innocuous of statements (“the light turned green, no homo”) or after the most unabashedly gay statements (“I enjoy having lots of sex with men, no homo”). Either way, the phrase makes no sense.

Cam’ron, Lil’ Wayne, and Kanye can protest all they want, but in my experience, most men don’t worry whether something they say might be misconstrued as sounding gay. And if a man actually said something “gay” inadvertently, most of them would laugh it off and promptly forget about it within two minutes. It’s just not something your average guy, regardless of orientation, worries about.

Let’s be brutally honest, shall we? When someone says “no homo”, it usually translates as “Omigod, did that sound gay? ‘Cause I’m not gay! I have never placed ads on craigslist looking for hot man-to-man loving, those magazines hidden underneath my sweaters in the bottom dresser drawer actually belong to my sister, and I have a girlfriend in Canada that I have major sexual intercourse with all the time!”

My suggestion? If you’re worried something you’re about to say (or rap on a record that will be heard by millions and last forever) could be taken as homosexual in nature, find a different way to say it that doesn’t require you to explain your sexual orientation in a suspiciously defensive manner. And if you ever decide to peek out from behind the door and take baby steps into the open, here are a few one-hit wonders that are, in fact, homo and aren’t obsessed with staying in that narrow closet you prefer.

Alex was a sensitive poet/songwriter who worked in a grocery store by day and sang lead in a rock and roll band at night. He was in love with Rita, a dispatcher for a beer distributor who played saxophone in the band, and along with the others, he dreamed of finding success as a member of the Heights. The group’s hopes were cruelly crushed, however, when Fox canceled The Heights after just three months due to declining ratings.

Jamie Walters, the actor who brought Alex to life, was also the lead vocalist on the show’s theme song, “How Do You Talk to an Angel”. In a rather cruel twist of fate, the song became a smash hit, spending two weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, just as The Heights’ final episodes were airing. At 23, Walters found himself both an unemployed actor and the official face and voice of a one-hit wonder.

Fortunately, his second chance at fame came a couple years later when he was cast as Ray Pruit, a carpenter and the lead singer of the Peach Pit After Dark house band, on Beverly Hills 90210. Walters quickly became a fan favorite, and in 1995, he released a self-titled album. Although it peaked at #70 and fell off the Billboard 200 album after four months, it did produce a Top 20 hit. “Hold On” spent half a year on the Hot 100, eventually peaking at #16.

Then things went bad.

A few years ago, I made a mix CD of some of my favorite songs and gave copies to my friends. One of the songs on the CD, Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up”, is currently being used to advertise the Where the Wild Things Are movie, and most of the other songs I shared hold up equally well, including Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life” (one of the best love songs I’ve ever heard), Doves’ “Black and White Town”, Jill Sobule’s “Cinnamon Park”, The Thrills’ “Big Sur”, Stereophonics’ “Dakota”, Keane’s “This Is the Last Time”, Interpol’s “Evil” (which has an awesome video, btw), Deena Carter’s “In a Heartbeat”, and Easyworld’s “How Did It Ever Come to This”. Of course, I also added Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day”, but in my defense, this was before the song got chosen for American Idol and started getting played 14 times every hour on the radio.

I ended the CD with one of my all-time favorite songs, “How to Be Dead” by Snow Patrol.

When I first ran across the video for “Chocolate”, a Snow Patrol single that spent two weeks on the Modern Rock chart, but otherwise didn’t make a major impression in the United States, I was intrigued. The video portrayed hundreds of people reacting to the world ending, from people running frantically and a couple having sex for the last time to a woman holding her crying child, while the band members calmly played their song. Towards the end, the sand in the hourglass runs out, and everywhere, people fall to the ground and shield themselves from the inevitable horror. Except… nothing happens. As they’re beginning to comprehend that fact, Gary Lightbody, the lead singer of Snow Patrol, walks over to the hourglass and turns it over, and the panic begins anew.

Although the song wasn’t bad, I was actually more impressed by the video, so I searched for more. Fortunately, I came across “Run”, a song that peaked at #15 on the Modern Rock chart in America, but was actually a Top 5 hit in the UK. The song was provocative and unforgettable. The last time I’d heard a song that instantly created a mood and a mystique like that was almost 20 years earlier, when “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” by Mike + the Mechanics played on the radio. I bought Snow Patrol’s Final Straw CD the next day.

And that’s when I heard “How to Be Dead”. I’m not completely sure what the song is about—it sounds like an argument between a drug addict and the woman who is tired of being hurt by him—but when she says, “You’ve not heard a single word I have said. Oh my god,” there’s something so heartbreaking about the way Gary sings the line (even though everyone’s probably heard and/or said something like that a thousand times in their lives). A clichéd complaint suddenly becomes far more serious than it should be, although it doesn’t hurt that earlier, she asks him, “Why can’t you shoulder the blame? / ‘Cause both my shoulders are heavy from the weight of us both”.

America has never fully embraced what I like to call frat rock – the blend of pop-punk perfection filled with crunchy hooks, lyrics that combine humor and attitude, and a keg-tapping, booty-chasing college guy mentality – even though some of my favorite songs would fit into that category.

Sure, Deadeye Dick’s “New Age Girl” became a Top 40 hit, peaking at #27 and selling half a million singles in the process. And “Flagpole Sitta” – the Harvey Danger song that ruled the summer of ‘98, at least for me – reached #38 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart (although with lyrics like “put me in the hospital for nerves and then they had to commit me, you told them all I was crazy, they cut off my legs, now I’m an amputee, goddamn you” the song should have been a number one smash).

But Blink-182’s arguably definitive frat rock song “What’s My Age Again?”, which stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 for almost five months, never charted higher than #58. The video, featuring Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker streaking through town, was both infamous and iconic, but unfortunately, the US didn’t seem to share their sense of humor. And SR-71’s awesome “Right Now”, which was a number two smash on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, never came close to charting on the mainstream Hot 100.

So it’s not surprising that Bowling for Soup, a pop-rock band from Wichita Falls, Texas, didn’t have much luck with “Girl All the Bad Guys Want”. With a tongue-twisting chorus and hooks that refused to let go for hours or even days, the song should have been one of the bigger hits of 2003. Instead, it barely lasted two months on the chart, peaking at #64.