My Top 1000 Songs #813: Since U Been Gone

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Been digging around in the Guilty Pleasures file a few times this month... but I don't feel much guilt for respecting a good pop song, even one that seems to go against everything I like about rock music. I'm happy to rail against contemporary professionally-designed mass-market-friendly personality-driven teeny-bopper pop created by uber-producers (particularly those with some horrid allegations against them), but if they manage to check all the right boxes and transcend the genre, who am I to complain? Every production decision made on this 2004 Kelly Clarkson track gets a knowing grin; it's hard to whine about celebrity pop-stars and inauthentic by-the-book songwriting when the earworm hook is dancing around your brain for weeks.