By Brian Hunt

(The following article was featured in the January issue of "The Beat," the free monthly music and pop culture newsletter. To sign up and receive more articles, interviews, and recommendations on the latest and greatest music, submit your email in the upper right corner of this site).

Here's one of the things I hate about getting older: when people remind you how old you are like you've somehow forgotten. The age reminder, at least the kind I've seen with great abundance recently, is usually offered to let you know that something from your youth is no longer a logical thought, passion or behavior at your current age.

Here are some examples: "You're still doing prank phone calls? Dude, you're 31!" Or, "Why are you arguing about the legitimacy of Spongebob Squarepants? You're 31." Or even worse, when that cute girl walks by, maybe looking a little younger, maybe wearing a backpack, and you raise your eyes the way guys do when a cute girl walks by, and someone turns to you and says, "Oh, c'mon. You're 31."

The thing is, once you cross the 30-threshold, there's really no opportune time to be reminded how old you are. It happened to me again recently, during a conversation with a few friends about MTV. One friend was claiming that he couldn't relate to the music on MTV anymore. Another friend said he didn't think MTV even played music anymore, and that the shows were awful too. I said that I hadn't seen the videos in a long time, was sure they weren't that bad, but that I did enjoy a handful of the shows. After a series of sighs and eye rolls, the group consensus to my comments seemed to be that I wouldn't enjoy the music on the channel anyway, and that I also shouldn't be watching the shows. It ended with the age reminder, "I mean, Bri, you are 31."

People who turn their noses at trash television and contemporary music do not easily unnerve me. That said, the conversation did make me wonder about what music was appearing on MTV these days. And as my friends had suggested, was the music not meant for me? Does music have an age limit? And at 31, had I entered the oddly titled "Adult-oriented Album Rock" fan-base? Maybe, like prank calls and eighteen year old girls with backpacks, the music of MTV was no longer meant for people of my ilk.

These hypothetical questions posed a daunting crossroads of sorts. Either revisit my tastes and explore the world of MTV, or click the channel down button one space and enter my life as a VH1 viewer. After an hour of the Fleetwood Mac Behind the Music (guess what - they all slept with each other!), I knew that I wasn't ready yet for VH1 on a fulltime basis. As Dylan once said (Thomas not Bob), I would not go quietly into the night. I owed it to my youth to at least spend a little time with MTV's current crop of videos to see if I could still get down with another generation's offering of musicians. This little MTV experiment was a much better way to tell if I'd truly outgrown the channel's music. And if so - was it a change in the music or me?

The first part of the experiment was perhaps the hardest part of all, finding actual music videos on MTV. See despite not being an avid video-watcher, as I mentioned, I still watch MTV, and didn't need any reacquainting with the channel itself. I'm a sucker for the Real World/Road Rules Challenge and it's esteemed predecessor, The Real World (which is just awful this season by the way, and I can't imagine anyone watching or enjoying it. That said, what's the deal with Landon's rage? And is Shavonda ever going to get off the phone?). I also think the dudes on Pimp My Ride are amazingly talented and pretty funny, and my favorite program on MTV is the high school makeover show, Made, which I could write a whole column on alone (yeah, I know, I'm 31).

For the most part, MTV's original programming is really quite trashy and poorly made; yet there's still a comforting and oddly endearing quality to it. Like eating Cookie Crisp cereal for breakfast or watching Overboard on TBS for the fifteenth time. MTV must recognize the easy consumption of these shows, because other than constant reruns of the aforementioned programs, in addition to Ozzy, Jessica Simpson and her sister's shows, there's really not much else on the channel other than the occasional awards ceremony or seasonal event - my favorite being their Spring Break specials with Jerry Springer (Springer Break).

(A little aside: MTV's Spring Break coverage of scantily clad hotties occasionally removing their string bikinis has little to no resemblance of the spring break trips I remember from my own college years. Maybe they're just not televising the three sunburned guys sitting in their hotel room with a bottle of Ronrico Rum, nursing cold chills and wondering where their fourth roommate has been for the past two days.)

There's really only one place to turn if you want to get a good grasp of the music MTV is endorsing these days, and that's TRL, short for Total Request Live - the daily countdown show in Time's Square, with a pack of screaming kids and occasional celebrities promoting their new movies. TRL is usually hosted by MTV's own version of Dick Clark, Carson Daly.

Out of journalistic integrity, I should state now that Carson Daly and myself were born on the exact same day, June 22, 1973. I must admit when I originally learned this, I momentarily wondered if there had been a glitch in destiny on that very day, and perhaps I should be hosting TRL and he should be writing about me for the Wondermore Newsletter. But alas, we play with the cards we're dealt. At the very least, Carson is 31 too. If he could get down with Kelly Clarkson and Mario, maybe I could, too.

So I sat through the entire hour-long show, and endured the shout outs and the holla back y'alls, and the boring banter between the young hottie VJs (Carson had the day off). In between it all, like a couch potato version of Jane Goodall, I watched the shortened clips of the top ten videos of the day. Here are my cursory thoughts:

I don't like Kelly Clarkson. I didn't see her on the original American Idol, and I know she apparently has a nice voice, but I find her pop music boring, derivative, and lacking the fun and bop of some of her contemporaries who do it better (one of whom is Gwen Stefani whose "Rich Girl" video came in at number 7). Clarkson's song "Since U Been Gone" held the number 2 spot. Another song I didn't care for that also misspelled the word "you," is Ashanti's "Only U," one spot below Clarkson. Ashanti is hot and very popular now, but she lacks the talent of old school Whitney and her music doesn't make you move like Destiny's Child whose goofy track "Soldier" held the 10 spot. Like Destiny's Child's older stuff, "Soldier" is a harmless and catchy dance number, which severely benefits in the video format thanks to the outfits of the three women - or lack there of.

Of the men on the list, I already knew and dug the number one song, Eminem's "Toy Soldiers," which reminds me a little of his earlier hit "Stan." Another rap number took the fourth spot, Ludacris's "Get Back," which sounded to me like a less catchy version of his last hit "Move Bitch" (one of my parent's favorites). I'm a huge fan of Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" (#9), a great song that seemed even better placed in the same context of the number 5 hit, Jesse McCartney's "Beautiful Soul." McCartney is essentially a boy band hidden under the guise of a singer songwriter, and his music seems poised for the soundtrack of the next Olsen Twins' movie.

There were a few other one-named artists mixed in there, that didn't really stick out to me one way or the other (Mario, Ciara - whatever). We were also given a look at a few bands on the verge of breaking into the countdown: U2, The Killers, and My Chemical Romance, all three of whom I like. Add these bands to Eminem, Ludacris, Green Day, Gwen Stefani and Destiny's Child, and I actually liked more of the bands on the list than I didn't. As I had hoped and expected, outside of say a Raffi album, music is not made with an age limit. If I were watching MTV's top ten countdown 20 years ago, I'm sure there would be some Jesse McCartney's mixed in there, annoying me regardless of my age. So for better or worse, my relationship with MTV is not all that different now than it was when I was eleven.

Eminem, U2 and The Killers can appeal to all ages (though I'm sure there are many Wayne Newton fans who would disagree). At the least, thanks to the "MTV Experiment," I know that I'm not yet old enough to no longer enjoy the latest crop of new pop and rock musicians. Honestly, it's a relief. I think I'll watch one episode of TRL every year until I hit the point where I no longer enjoy any of their artists. It's a day I don't look forward to, but I'm sure someone will be there to provide me with an excuse to make me feel better about it when it happens. Something like, "Dude, you're not supposed to like MTV. You're 84."